Borgo San Jacopo

"The name already reveals part of the history of the street: in Florence, the borghi were in fact those streets that exited the city at one of the ancient gates of the early medieval walls, along which the houses of the new arrivals in the city stood and which were then gradually incorporated into the new wall layouts. At least two borghi emerged from the Ponte Vecchio: Borgo Piazza (now Via Guicciardini) and Borgo San Jacopo, precisely. During the Middle Ages, it was the object of considerable building activity, after it was incorporated into the walls of the 12th century and has maintained a medieval appearance up to the present day, boasting the primacy of being the Florentine street with the highest concentration of surviving medieval towers, five plus a sixth in a side street. To tell the truth, the current appearance of the street is largely the result of post-war restoration and reconstruction, during the decade 1945-1955, after the Germans had mined and heavily destroyed all the accesses to the Ponte Vecchio during their retreat in August 1944. However, compared to via Por Santa Maria and via Guicciardini, the reconstruction in Borgo San Jacopo was more accurate, since the building speculation did not reach the levels of sloppiness of the other areas. To get an idea of ​​the modern buildings you have to look out over the other bank of the Arno to see the buildings facing it. There was a great discussion at the time between innovative and traditional architects and a compromise solution was chosen: modern facades but traditional layout of the volumes, with buildings at irregular heights leaning on the corbels beyond the bank. Among the designers who were called to collaborate in the drafting of the urban reconstruction plans were Lando Bartoli, Edoardo Detti, Italo Gamberini, Leonardo Savioli, even if in the final stages the work was carried out by the municipal technical offices."