Loggia dei Lanzi

The Loggia dei Lanzi is a building located on the Piazza della Signoria at Florence.
Elle is also often called the loggia della Signoria (but wrongfully of Orcagna to which it was initially allotted).

History

This gallery with vault in arcades was built between 1376 and 1382 by Benci di Cione and Simone di Francesco Talenti, pupils of Andrea Orcagna. It was a long time the symbol of the democracy florentine because it was intended, right from the start, with the ceremonies and receptions of the republic of Florence like the establishment of the Gonfalonier S and of the priors and his initial name Loggia dei Priori was then replaced by the presence, at the 16th century, of the Lansquenet S ( Lanzichenecchi ) of Cosme I {{er}} of Tuscany which were stationed there.

Today, of many works of art (statues) of the museum of the Uffizi located in the vicinity are exposed there like, inter alia, the Persée of Cellini, the Enlèvement of Sabines and Hercules fights about it against the Centaur of Giambologna, the removal of Polyxène (or Viol of Polyxène ) of Pio Fedi only statue modern going back to 1866.
Si some are copies, the originals being protected in their respective museums, the loggia remains by its conformation, an open museum and accessible day and night.

The Feldherrnhalle of Munich was built on this model.

Two lions of the marble are located in top of the steps, one of Roman epoch and the other carried out in the years 1600 by Flaminio Vacca; the lion symbol of the town of Florence, but also symbol running of protection against the negative presences, according to an iconographic tradition which goes back to civilizations mésopotamiennes.

On the right wall, a Latin inscription recalls the adoption of the calendar common, which begins on January 1st, to Florence since 1750, whereas prédédemment it began (what is today) on March 25th. Another inscription of 1863 points out stages of the unification of Italy.

In 1850 on the posterior wall of the loggia, the marquis Cosimo Ridolfi, then Minister for Education, makes pose a thermometer and a barometer on two marble discs with the inscriptions necessary to communicate to the people of Florence, noted scientific measurements. Their realization is entrusted to the father Filippo Cecchi, physicist and meteorologist and with the director of the Specola Astronomique Fiorentina , the father Giovanni Antonelli. Not being more in the artistic tone of the loggia, they are today on a panel of the museum of the History of science with a plate which recalls the origins and the history of it.

One will also notice the marble statues accounting for the four cardinal Virtues placed in the clover openings of the capital of the frontage.

Gallery

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