Events

The first chronicles concerning the area where the present building stands date back to the Longobard age, when a first core of what would afterwards become the Chiesa di S. Pier Maggiore already existed.
Later on, an important Benedictine Monastery was added.
With the construction of the first city walls (1173-1175), the area found itself inside the fortified town and became, in the meantime, the district of the Wool Guild.
During the next centuries, that part of the city was affected by some urban renewal works, up to the demolition of both the Monastery and the Church in the XVIII century. The area was expropriated and sold to private individuals whose building industry during the following decades was modest and not as interesting as the past one.
That urban rebuilding reached its height in the nineteenth century with the carrying out of the Teatro Verdi, which gave the name to the present street.

The building

The building was projected during that particular moment of the city planning reorganization and it embodies some remains of the ancient conventual complex destroyed in the Eighteenth century. Actually the whole perimeter of the building is characterized by the presence of wide barrel vault spaces in the basement which presumably belonged to the ancient ecclesiastical complex.
On the front of the building, in Via Verdi, next to a long balcony, you can find a memorial tablet placed in memory of poet Giacomo Leopardi’s stay.

Arrived to Florence for the first time in 1828, Leopardi lived in the city from 1830 to 1833 and just found his accommodation in Via Verdi 11 building.
In the Tuscan city, the poet played an active role in its cultural life and produced many compositions in verse.

Leopardi's memorial tablet

The text of the headstone is the following:

MDCCCCI
TOWNHALL DECREE
_____.___

IN THIS HOUSE FOR SEVERAL TIMES
FROM 1828 TO 1833
GIACOMO LEOPARDI STAYED
AND HERE
TO HIS FRIENDS FROM TUSCANY
HE USED TO DEDICATE HIS POEMS
IN WHOSE AUSTERE HARMONIES
UNDEFEATED BY DISCOURAGEMENT FOR HUMAN FACTS
FATEFUL PERSISTED
THE MAGNANIMOUS MARKS
OF ITALIAN HOPES

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