Giovanni Villani

This corner of the block was owned by the Villani family. Giovanni Villani (whose statue adorns the corner of the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo above) was one of the earliest Florentine historians and we owe a lot of what we know about Dante’s times from writers like him. Although he was about 10-15 years younger than Dante, his nephew Filippo claimed in his own public Dante lectures around 1392 that the two had been friends. Giovanni was from a modest family and was respected as a regular member of the Commune’s government, but he is best known as the principal author of the Nuova cronica, a history of the world with an emphasis on Florence.

Its first six books cover the period stretching from the Tower of Babel to the arrival of Charles of Anjou in Italy. The remaining six recount what happened between 1265, the year of Dante’s birth, and 1348, the arrival of the Black Death in Florence. When Giovanni contracted the plague and died, his brother Matteo took over the composition and enlargement of the Nuova cronica, which was carried on for a bit longer still by Matteo’s son Filippo.

For the year 1321, in which Dante died, Giovanni recorded what is now considered the oldest biography of our poet.

On the wall of his house is the plaque pictured above. It reads: “Giovanni, Matteo and Filippo Villani lived and wrote here the histories of Florence.”