{"id":10722,"date":"2015-03-12T07:40:03","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T06:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arttrav.com\/?p=10722"},"modified":"2022-04-08T10:53:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T08:53:31","slug":"ponte-vecchio-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arttrav.com\/florence\/ponte-vecchio-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Things you didn\u2019t know about the Ponte Vecchio"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ponte Vecchio<\/strong> or \u2018Old Bridge\u2019, that joins the centre of city with the district of Oltrarno<\/strong> on the south bank of the river Arno, is surely one of the great icons of Florence<\/strong> and one of the most famous bridges in the world.<\/p>\n

It crosses the river at its narrowest point within the city, and a series of bridges – of which this the fifth – have stood on or around this spot since the days of the Ancient Romans. The current bridge was finished by 1350, built after a catastrophic flood in 1333 carried away its predecessor. It is best known today for the wooden-shuttered goldsmiths\u2019 shops that line both sides of it, and for the Vasari Corridor that runs over it (a private aerial walkway built in 1561 so the Medici family could move between the Palazzo Pitti and the Palazzo Vecchio, safe from risk of assassination in the streets below). Much has been written about the Ponte Vecchio, but there are certain things about this famous landmark that you may not know.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Ponte Vecchio, seen from the Ponte Santa Trinita<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

1: Who built the Ponte Vecchio<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the 16th Century, the first art historian, Giorgio Vasari<\/strong> (responsible for the corridor above the bridge), credited the design of the bridge to the Florentine artist and architect Taddeo Gaddi, a student of Giotto. But there is no other evidence to corroborate this, and Vasari wasn\u2019t always right. Another name that has been suggested is that of Neri di Fioravanti, but again without supporting evidence, and modern scholars have begun to look in a different direction.<\/p>\n

Further downstream, the Ponte alla Carraia also collapsed in the flood of 1333, and Fra Giovanni da Campi, a Dominican friar of Santa Maria Novella, was the architect responsible for rebuilding it between 1334 and 1337. The Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella were experts in building large vaults, and the first to consistently use the term \u2018architect\u2019 (as opposed to master mason) in their documents. The audacious use of wide, flattened arches for the Ponte Vecchio – like those of the Ponte alla Carraia – strongly suggests the involvement of Giovanni da Campi or another Dominican. Da Campi could not have seen the construction through to completion, as he died just three months after the project was commenced in May 1339, but it could have been built to his design.<\/p>\n

\"Ponte<\/a>
Ponte Vecchio in the late summer evening. Photo by Flickr user Chuyan Yu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2: Mystic numbers are important<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The involvement of the Dominicans becomes more likely when considering the horizontal proportions used in the plan of the bridge and the blocks of shops built upon it, which can be reduced to 1:2:4, and correspond to the first progression of Platonic numeric theory. The bridge was commissioned to be \u201cbeautiful and honourable\u201d, and in the Middle Ages harmony was regarded as an indispensable part of beauty.<\/p>\n

The bridge is literally \u2018harmonic\u2019 because its lateral proportions of 1:2 form a musical octave, also the sacred concord in Pythagorean Mysticism. All this suggests the sort of sophisticated thinking which believed that mathematics and geometry were fundamental to the divine order of the universe: just the sort of learning which would have been found at Santa Maria Novella. (For more on the Dominican order of things, read this article about their decoration of the Spanish Chapel<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

3: Ponte Vecchio was a defensive structure<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"Castevecchio
The Castevecchio Bridge, Verona, mid-14th Century. This bridge gives a good impression of how the Ponte Vecchio and its predecessor were originally fortified. Photo: Starmaro\/Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Ponte Vecchio was designed in part as a defensive structure. In Medieval Italy the use of rivers to launch attacks was a well-established element of the art of war, and although Florence was surrounded by walls, an enemy might attack in boats along the Arno itself. Following the practice of the previous bridge here, the Ponte Vecchio had four towers (two at each end), and walls with battlements running down both sides, broken only by the observation area in the very centre of the bridge. The Mannelli tower (now much reduced) at the south end is the only obvious survivor of these fortifications, which can be seen in the famous 15th<\/sup> Century \u2018Chain View\u2019 of Florence. A document of 1346 lists regulations that include fines for shopkeepers breaking the exterior walls facing the river. Florence\u2019s other three Medieval bridges, being of less strategic importance, were not fortified.<\/p>\n