At the end of the Via Faenza--where once stood one of Arnolfo's gates--we are out again upon the Viale, here named after Filippo Strozzi. Opposite rises what was the great Medicean citadel, the Fortezza da Basso, built by Alessandro dei Medici to overawe the city. Michelangelo steadfastly refused, at the risk of his life, to have anything to do with it. Filippo Strozzi is said to have aided Alessandro in carrying out this design, and even to have urged it upon him, although he was warned that he was digging his own grave. After the unsuccessful attempt of the exiles to overthrow the newly-established government of Duke Cosimo, while Baccio Valori and the other prisoners were sent to be beheaded or hanged in the Bargello, Filippo Strozzi was imprisoned here and cruelly tortured, in spite of the devoted attempts of his children to obtain his release. Here at length, in 1538, he was found dead in his cell. He was said to have left a paper declaring that, lest he should be more terribly tortured and forced to say things to prejudice his own honour and inculpate innocent persons, he had resolved to take his own life, and that he commended his soul to God, humbly praying Him, if He would grant it no other good, at least to give it a place with that of Cato of Utica. It is not improbable that the paper was a fabrication, and that Filippo had been murdered by orders of the Duke. CHAPTER XI _The Bridges--The Quarter of Santa Maria Novella_ "Sopra il bel fiume d'Arno alla gran villa." --_Dante._ Outside the portico of the Uffizi four Florentine heroes--Farinata degli Uberti, Piero Capponi, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Francesco Ferrucci--from their marble niches keep watch and ward over the river. This Arno, which Lapo Gianni dreamed of as _balsamo fino_, is spanned by four ancient and famous bridges, and bordered on both banks by the Lungarno. To the east is the Ponte Rubaconte--so called after the Milanese Podestà, during whose term of office it was made--or Ponte alle Grazie, built in 1237; it is mentioned by Dante in Canto xii. of the _Purgatorio_, and is the only existing Florentine bridge which could have actually felt the footsteps of the man who was afterwards to tread scathless through the ways of Hell, "unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume." It has, however, been completely altered at various periods. On this bridge a solemn reconciliation was effected between Guelfs and Ghibellines on July 2, 1273, by Pope Gregory X. The Pope in state, between Charles of Anjou and the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople, blessed his "reconciled" people from the bridge, and afterwards laid the first stone of a church called San Gregorio della Pace in the Piazza dei Mozzi, now destroyed. As soon as the Pope's back was turned, Charles contrived that his work should be undone, and the Ghibellines hounded again out of the city.[49]