The new fortifications did not prove strong enough to withstand the furious onslaught of a mob led by the Adimari, which broke into the palace in 1304, liberated Messer Talamo from prison and forced the Podestà, Messer Gigliolo de’ Puntagli, of Parma, to fly for his life. The Commune was then engaged in war, and did not begin to repair the palace until peace was made with Pisa, thirteen years later. The work must have continued for two years, as in August, 1319, eighteen golden florins were expended in order to render the house of the Cerchi a fit habitation for the Count of Battifolle, Vicario of King Robert of Naples. He only took up his abode in the Palazzo del Podestà the following year. Even then the masons were still busy, as in the State archives a deed exists showing that the loggia on the first floor was then altered to its present form by an architect called Toni di Giovanni; at all events as far as regards the columns and the pilasters. The vaulted roof, as Passerini points out, was finished later, during the tyrannical rule of Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, as his arms are on the keystones. In 1326 the Duke of Calabria, who had been elected ruler of Florence after the disastrous defeat of the Florentine arms at Altopascio, held his court in the renovated palace, until his death, two years later, freed Florence from his hated rule. The Commune then voted thirty golden florins to restore the palace to its pristine condition, an additional sum was spent for desks in the audience chamber, for a rostrum in the great hall and for a fire-place. But in the terrible conflagration of 28th February, 1332, as Villani tells us, “the palace of the Podestà caught fire, the entire roof of the old palace was burnt and two-thirds of the new, from the first vault upwards. So the Commune ordered that it should be rebuilt and every room be vaulted up to the very roof.” After fire came water, for in the same year the Arno rose to an unprecedented height, and devastated the city and the surrounding country. “The water stood 6 braccie deep in the courtyard,” reports Villani. Neri di Fioravanti, a skilful architect, whose name often occurs in the books of the Commune as superintendent of the principal works of the city, was called in to restore, or rather, to rebuild the palace. Vasari attributes this work to Agnolo Gaddi, and writes that, “according to his orders all the rooms in the palace of the Podestà were built with vaults instead of flat ceilings, so that, besides being more beautiful, they should not again be exposed to damage from fire as had happened not long before. And afterwards, by the advice of Agnolo, the battlements we still see were built round the said palace, of which there had formerly been no trace.” The name of Gaddi, who was then a mere youth, does not however exist in the account books of the work done in the palace, only _Nerio Fioravantis magister lapidum et lignaminum_, is mentioned.