Baldovinetti

The Baldovinetti were among the most influential Florentine families and traced their origins to Baldovinetto de’ Guidi. The Guidi counts belonged to one of the oldest clans in the city, having arrived from Fiesole. Being Ghibellines and Ghibelline sympathizers, they were forced into exile when their party fell out of power.

At that point, Baldovinetto made a break with his familiar tradition and allied himself permanently with the Guelphs, changing his last name and that of his descendants.

From 1287 to 1527, members of the extended Baldovinetti family included eight Gonfalonieri di Giustizia and thirty-two priors. The ancient seat of the family’s power lay near the corner of Via Por S. Maria and Borgo SS. Apostoli, an area that comprised this tower.

The tower suffered substantial damage in the German retreat in 1944. But before that, there was once a Dante plaque here bearing the following inscription.

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   Già eran Gualterotti ed Importuni,
ed ancor saria Borgo più quieto,
se di nuovi vicin fosser digiuni.

(Paradiso XVI.133-35)

   Once the Gualterotti and Importuni lived here
and Borgo would still be a quiet place
had it been deprived of new neighbors.

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Cacciaguida is here speaking poorly of this neighborhood, where ancient Florentine families once lived but was in Dante’s time disgraced by “new neighbors,” that is, families like the Baldovinetti who were thought to have arrived here (in those years just outside the ancient ring of walls) from Fiesole.

The urbanization characterized by a flood of people from outside the walls was made up principally by commoners who, though lacking noble blood, had become wealthy from commercial ventures, like the Baldovinetti and the Buondelmonti family too.

Coat of arms of the Baldovinetti family