The River Arno and its bridges in Fiorenza (medieval Florence)
The Ponte Vecchio (pictured above) is the most famous bridge in Florence. Its name translates to The Old Bridge. However, did you know that in its current state it is not in fact the oldest bridge in the city! In the Middle Ages, the bridges were originally built in wood and as the Arno was prone to flooding, these were frequently washed away and needed to be rebuilt. The Ponte Vecchio, the first and original bridge of Florence built where the river was narrowest, was built by Romans. However, the first historical record of a stone bridge was after a flooding on 4th November 1177. At this point it was rebuilt with 5 stone arches covered in wood. The earliest shops on the Ponte Vecchio were flush with the bridge rather than jutting out over the river as they are today and were mostly inhabited by tanners and butchers so that the waste of their business could flow directly into the river below.
In the early thirteenth century, the boom in business in the town and subsequent population growth, meant that additional access to the Oltrarno (the other side of the river, literally ‘across the Arno’) was needed. Two more bridges were built – the Ponte Nuovo, or New Bridge, (now Ponte alla Carraia) in 1218, and the Ponte di Rubiconte (now Ponte alle Grazie) in 1237. The Ponte alla Carraia subsequently flooded again in 1269. There does not seem to be any clear date as to when it was rebuilt but it collapsed under the weight of a crowd in 1304 so it would have been some time between those dates. It is not unfeasible, therefore, to imagine that construction would have been ongoing whilst Guidaloste was in Fiorenza. At the time of The Power of the Wouivre, the Ponte di Rubiconte was a plain stone bridge, but in 1292 it had various shops built on it, akin to the current Ponte Vecchio, including various hermitage huts for homeless women and a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, ‘Our Lady of Grace’, which gave it its current name Ponte alle Grazie. It kept this medieval appearance until the 1800’s when the buildings were knocked down to make way for trams. In 1252 the Ponte Santa Trinita was the fourth bridge to cross the medieval Arno, built, initially in wood and then in stone after it collapsed under the weight of a crowd in 1259. It came down again in the same flood of 1269 that took down the Ponte alle Carraia, and was subsequently rebuilt.
In 1333 there was a massive flood which killed more than 3000 people and destroyed all the bridges, bar the Ponte alle Grazie. After this all the bridges were reconstructed in stone, starting with the Ponte alla Carraia in 1337. The Ponte Vecchio was then rebuilt in 1345, and at the same time the Ponte alle Grazie was also reconstructed with 9 arches, making it the longest bridge in Florence (2 arches were filled in 2 years later). The Ponte Santa Trinita rebuild was the last, commencing in 1346 but not being completed until 1415. At this time, right up until WWII, the Ponte Vecchio was not, therefore, the oldest bridge of the city. Both the Ponte alle Grazie, being the only bridge still standing after the 1333 flood, and the Ponte alle Carraia, being the first bridge to be rebuilt after the flood, were able to claim age superiority over the Ponte Vecchio. However, after the latter became the only bridge not to be bombed during the 2nd World War, in theory, it could be said that it reclaimed its title as the oldest bridge of the city.
Interestingly, 4th November seems to be a particularly inauspicious date for the Florentines as 3 of the most damaging floods of history have occurred on that date – 1177, 1333, and 1966. Moreover, there was a flood in 1844 on the 3rd November and in 1864, on the 6th November! If you travel around Florence today, keep an eye out for the inscribed plaques on the sides of buildings, indicating how high the flood waters rose in each year.