According to the tradition, Giovanni Cimabue had his studio in the
former street, and it was here that, in Dante's words, he thought to
hold the field in painting: _Credette Cimabue nella pittura tener lo
campo._ Here, according to Vasari, he was visited by Charles the Elder
of Anjou, and his great Madonna carried hence in procession with music
and lighted candles, ringing of bells and waving of banners, to Santa
Maria Novella; while the street that had witnessed such a miracle was
ever after called _Borgo Allegri_, "the happy suburb:" "named the Glad
Borgo from that beauteous face," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts
it. Unfortunately there are several little things that show that this
story needs revision of some kind. When Charles of Anjou came to
Florence, the first stone of Santa Maria Novella had not yet been
laid, and the picture now shown there as Cimabue's appears to be a
Sienese work. The legend, however, is very precious, and should be
devoutly held. The king in question was probably another Angevin
Charles--Carlo Martello, grandson of the elder Charles and titular
King of Hungary, Dante's friend, who was certainly in Florence for
nearly a month in the spring of 1295, and made himself exceedingly
pleasant. Vasari has made a similar confusion in the case of two
emperors of the name of Frederick. The picture has doubtless perished,
but the Joyous Borgo has not changed its name.
The Via dei Malcontenti leads out into the broad Viale Carlo Alberto,
which marks the site of Arnolfo's wall. It formerly ended in a postern
gate, known as the Porta della Giustizia, beyond which was a little
chapel--of which no trace is left--and the place where the gallows
stood. The condemned were first brought to a chapel which stood in the
Via dei Malcontenti, near the present San Giuseppe, and then taken out
to the chapel beyond the gate, where the prayers for the dying were
said over them by the friars, after which they were delivered to the
executioner.[37] In May 1503, as Simone Filipepi tells us, a man was
beheaded here, whom the people apparently regarded as innocent; when
he was dead, they rose up and stoned the executioner to death. And
this was the same executioner who, five years before, had hanged
Savonarola and his companions in the Piazza, and had insulted their
dead bodies to please the dregs of the populace. The tower, of which
the mutilated remains still stand here, the _Torre della Zecca
Vecchia_, formerly called the _Torre Reale_, was originally a part of
the defences of a bridge which it was intended to build here in honour
of King Robert of Naples in 1317, and guarded the Arno at this point.
After the siege, during which the Porta della Giustizia was walled up,
Duke Alessandro incorporated the then lofty Torre Reale into a strong
fortress which he constructed here, the Fortezza Vecchia. In later
days, offices connected with the Arte del Cambio and the Mint were
established in its place, whence the present name of the Torre della
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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