In June 1378, when the _Arti_, or Guilds, rose against the nobles, and to the cry of _Viva il Popolo_ sacked and burnt many of the old towers and palaces, those of the Buondelmonti, which extended from the Piazza Sta. Trinita some way down the Borgo S.S. Apostoli, were destroyed. The façade of the present palace, which must have been far more imposing before the great loggia at the top was bricked up and divided into many rooms, was frescoed by Jacone early in the XVIth century, with subjects from the life of Pippo Spano,[22] but all traces of his work have perished. The name of Buondelmonti occurs frequently in the annals of Florence among her soldiers and her ambassadors, while Esau, son of Manente who married a sister of the Grand Seneschal Acciaiuoli (see p. 2) and followed his brother-in-law to Naples where he was made Lord High Chamberlain, attained the dignity of King of Rumenia and Despot of Arta, but died childless. Zanobi Buondelmonti was implicated in the plot to assassinate the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, and on hearing of the arrest of Alamanni, one of the conspirators, he hurried home to conceal himself in one of those secret hiding places which existed in all large houses. But his wife, with courage “more worthy of a man than of a woman,” writes Nardi, drove him almost by force out of the house, gave him all the money she could gather together, and told him to make haste and cross the frontier. As he left the city he met the Cardinal returning from his afternoon drive, and barely escaped being seen by dashing into the shop of a sculptor. He reached the frontier in safety and went to his friend Ludovico Ariosto, then Podestà of Castelnuovo in the Ferrara territory, who had always been Buondelmonti’s guest when he came to Florence. Varchi says that he was also an intimate friend of Machiavelli “whose virtues he acquired without being tainted by any of his vices.” He was eventually pardoned, and died with his whole family of the plague at Barga, where he was Commissary. Andrea, one of the few of the family who entered the Church, was Archbishop of Florence. The family came to an end in 1774 when the Senator Francesco Giovacchino de’ Buondelmonti died, and the palace is now the property of Signor Adami. PALAZZO DEL BUONTALENTI (CASINO DI SAN MARCO) _Via Cavour. No. 63._