Florence, talks over hotel that could disfigure Boboli area. Even Schmidt concerned

There is renewed discussion in Florence about theextra-luxury hotel project that worries many city residents and all those who care about the fate of Florence’s artistic and scenic heritage because there is a fear that the project will disfigure the Costa di San Giorgio, the area of the city where the Pitti Palace complex and the Boboli Gardens are also located. We had summarized the facts in September: the plan to build the hotel, reported the association Idra, one of the most active on the issue, could heavily modify the area between Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, the Boboli Gardens, Costa San Giorgio, Forte Belvedere, via di Belvedere and via San Leonardo, going to impact on the level of safety, health and environmental quality, the protection of the historical-artistic heritage involved, the same impacts on the civic sensitivity of residents and public opinion. Even, there was talk of a possible inclined elevator to be inserted between Boboli and the hotel.

These days there are two further developments affecting the project. The first is the collection of signatures that Idra is promoting so that theRegional Authority for the Guarantee and Promotion of Participation can start a process of listening, debate and proposal, as provided for in Regional Law no. 46 of 2013, the so-called “Law on Participation,” which provides for the possibility, by the Authority, to order a Public Debate on the works of public initiatives involving total investments above 50 million euros (road and rail infrastructure, power lines, facilities for the transport and storage of fuels, ports and airports, hydroelectric reservoirs and dams, radiocommunication networks), if requested by at least 0.1 percent of residents who have reached the age of sixteen years also organized in associations and committees. If the requirements are met, the Authority shall subsequently determine the manner in which the debate is to be held so as to promote participation and ensure maximum information.

To get around the debate on the Costa San Giorgio project, 400 signatures from residents are needed, and there are two weeks to collect them (information can be obtained at idrafir@gmail.com or by calling 328 8262523): if activated, the Debate will ensure that “the best ideas of residents, students, commuters, artisans, office workers, merchants, women and men of culture are gathered,” Idra stresses. Otherwise, “it would be sad to have to mourn, tomorrow, a great opportunity lost.”

The second piece of news is the intervention of Uffizi director Eike Schmidt, who has come into the picture since the intervention also directly affects the complex he directs. Alerted by citizens, Schmidt wrote to the Palazzo Vecchio’s Urban Planning Department and the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio of Florence. “Reconstructing the affair that led Palazzo Vecchio to endorse in the middle of the Unesco area, between Boboli and the Bardini Garden, a variant to the urban regulations without a strategic environmental assessment,” Idra reports, the association discovered “that the very ’neighbor’ of the new owner of the former Vittorio Veneto Barracks, Eike Schmidt, was kept in the dark about the contents of the project that is the subject of the variant. The association therefore thought it best to alert the Director of the Uffizi Galleries (which includes the Boboli Museum Complex), documenting this with the first observations proposed last July to the municipal administration (followed in September by a second block of critical reflections on the method and merit of the procedure adopted by Palazzo Vecchio: here are all the observations made so far).”

Schmidt wrote drawing attention to the extraordinary delicacy of the context in which the Variant is placed, which envisages, for the benefit of a new 86 percent tourist-receptive urban destination, a profound building renovation: “It is necessary to point out the need that any initiative and/or intervention that affects the areas immediately adjacent to the Boboli Museum Complex must be carried out with respect for the primary objective of guaranteeing and preserving the integrity of the cultural heritage of the same,” Schmidt wrote. “The Boboli Gardens,” the director added, “is an open-air museum of inestimable cultural value, and as such must be preserved in its total physical integrity both above and below ground.” Indeed, the project includes an underground excavation to accommodate two parking lots, a driveway tunnel and underground services. Therefore, it is the duty of the Uffizi, Schmidt’s note continues, “to endeavor to put in place all useful measures to protect, manage and enhance its collections, including archaeological, historical-artistic, architectural, landscape and natural assets.” Among the treasures that the subsoil of the Costa San Giorgio area might hide are also to be counted the testimonies of the first Christian community, gathered, in the Roman Florentia, around the very nearby church of Santa Felicita. In addition, “The Boboli Monumental Park,” Schmidt explains, “analogous to a venous system of a human body, is composed of tunnels and conduits that carry the water that makes the vegetation lush, feeds springs and nurseries, stores and preserves, basins that hold precious collections of aquatic plants, fountains and water features that decorate the Grottoes, a theme so dear to the historic monumental Florentine gardens first of the Medici and then of Lorraine.”

And it is precisely near the oldest of these Grottoes, known as “di Madama,” that the hotel project presented to the city administration by the owner of the former Costa San Giorgio Barracks (where the hotel will be built) envisages the installation of an inclined elevator to serve guests: welcomed through the main door of the Pitti Palace, past the Ammannati courtyard the project envisages that guests of the resort will reach, along the Orto di Giove, the mechanical means that will transfer them to their rooms.

“As extensively documented in copious bibliography,” Schmidt concludes, “the hydraulic regime of Boboli, taking advantage of the slope of the hillside and empirically applying the basic principles of hydraulic science based on the gravitational laws of physics, was conceived and realized with a gravity-flow system, by construction of aqueducts that still feed the Garden today.” So, the missive ends, since for years the Uffizi complex “has been scrupulously working to preserve this fragile and delicate water and hydrogeological balance, both through periodic maintenance and by carrying out extraordinary maintenance works where necessary,” and all of this “together with constant of research and study, which is essential to comply with the preservation and protection of such an invaluable cultural heritage,” the entities are asked “to give due consideration to the above-mentioned observations in order to make the most appropriate determinations.”

Satisfaction on the part of Idra for Schmidt’s words: “We note with great satisfaction with how promptly the Galleries directed by you have taken up the reasonable alarm launched by the undersigned Association once it was possible to ascertain the non-involvement of the Management of the Uffizi Galleries in the procedure that led the City of Florence to the definition of the Simplified Variation to the Urban Regulation Standard Sheet AT 12.05 Ex Caserma Vittorio Veneto, adopted in the absence of Strategic Environmental Assessment, and the related urban transformation and building renovation. Considering it useful and appropriate that the local Florentine institutions have full knowledge of the important care that this Directorate shows to have for the integral protection of the Garden, the present is also transmitted for information to the President of the City Council, to the President of the Urban Planning Commission, to the Council Groups, to the Council of District 1, to the Mayor and to the competent Councillors of the City of Florence.”

Pictured is the site where the hotel is to be built.

Florence, talks over hotel that could disfigure Boboli area. Even Schmidt concerned

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