F. Acciaiuoli-Buondelmonti

The Palace of the Acciaiuoli, located on Borgo Santi Apostoli, now houses a hotel (Hotel Torre Guelfa). Its tower, among the most ancient of Florence, was built in 1280 by the Buondelmonti, who owned the entire city block. It was quite common for powerful families in Dante’s times to make a kind of fortress out of their properties. In times of peril, members of the family or consorteria would barricade themselves within their towers until the danger subsided.

It was incorporated into the palazzo in 1341 by its new owner, Niccolò Acciaiuoli, once a friend of Francis Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, who was then serving as the Gran Siniscalco (Great Seneschal) of the Kingdom of Naples. For this reason, the building is also called the Palace of the Great Seneschal.

By the end of the 1500s, the palace had been purchased by the Usimbardi, a family of wealthy noblemen from nearby Colle Val d’Elsa. In the 1800s, tourist guides warmly recommended that travelers stay here. Sadly, the palazzo was destroyed by the Nazis during their retreat in 1944. What you see here is the twentieth-century restoration.

The Acciaiuoli were a prominent, probably Guelph, family originally from Brescia. They came to Florence around 1160 and worked in the steel trade, from which they derive their name because acciaiolo meant “steelworker.” Their wealth and prestige grew steadily in Dante’s day and they occupied several important political positions in the 1300s thanks in part to their banking relationships with Angevin kings of Naples.

Our next destination is on the other end of this same block.

Coat of arms of the Acciaiuoli family