Florence, landlord defaces Dante-era column by applying metal box to it

On the stones of the ashlar of a column of the ancient Loggiato dei Cerchi in Florence, a ’landlord’ nailed (or worse, applied using a drill) a small box of the kind used today to lock the key of the apartment rented to touristsinside it so they can enter without the need for the landlord’s presence. The Florentine Corriere published the news with an article by Giulio Gori, complete with a photo of the keybox attached to theancient stones of the corner column of a later plugged-in loggia of the building of the rich and powerful Florentine in vogue between the 1200s and 1300s that makes up the block between Via dei Cerchi and Via dei Cimatori. On either side of the column are carved family coats of arms.

On the remains of the glorious palace the signs of the modernity of the rent: the spread of tourist rentals in the historic center of Florence has generated an explosion of demand that has led homeowners to solve the problem of being on site to open to tourists arriving at any time with the delivery of keys no longer in person but leaving them inside combination-opening caskets (which is communicated only to their customers). They are usually found hooked to door handles or window grilles, but no one had yet attached them to the detriment of a historic building.

The small container with the combination was reported to the Municipal Police, which, as reported by the Courier, started the investigation to find out who is responsible, to which house the key contained inside belongs.

The owner of the apartment, put on the market on one of the many sites in the sector, thanks to this little plastic box does not need to travel to the place to open the apartment to the tourist and thus gains time, but the very sense with which the Airbnb portal was born is lost, namely that of a vacation lived not in an aseptic hotel but in the sharing of an experience (the sharing economy precisely) with the inhabitants of the place that you visit by getting to know them and entering their home. Now, however, after houses have already become for the exclusive use of tourists (with owners moving to the suburbs) and after the management of the tourist had shifted to specially hired staff through agencies, now we don’t even waste the time to hand over the keys. We force tourists to go on a treasure hunt among many padlocks hanging here and there around the city for so-called self check-in. “This time, however,” writes the Courier, “the box was not fixed on the usual wall, but on a stone column, evidence of the ancient Loggia dei Cerchi (not to be confused with the tower of the same name a few meters away). It is a six-story building largely without any particular historical merit, except for those vestiges on the ground floor represented by ashlar portions of strong stone, complete with water-leaf capitals and shields, interspersed with horse rings, flag-bearers and a wrought-iron torch. And, although almost completely eroded, the arms of the Cerchi family, who lived here, can be glimpsed between the stones. In short, a defacement of a historical-artistic asset, no different from defacements that are punished with penalties of 1,000 to 3,000 euros and with sentences ranging from six months to three years in prison.”

Very difficult to trace the perpetrators, on the box in fact there is no indication of which door opens the key inside. As the Corriere recalls, that building was defined by Mayor Piero Bargellini in the 1960s as “one of the most important architectural documents of Dante’s time,” and already at the time “the Fine Arts had classified it as a monumental building to be protected as part of the Italian artistic heritage.”

Image: the remains of the Loggia dei Cerchi (photo: Francesco Bini)

Florence, landlord defaces Dante-era column by applying metal box to it

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