PALAZZO GINORI CONTI
Via Cavour. No. 7.
From the Riccardi palace to Via Guelfa nearly all the houses once belonged to various members of the Medici family, who migrated from their original dwellings in the centre of Florence to settle near S. Lorenzo, and in this palace, often mentioned as “la casa vecchia” (the old house), Cosimo the Elder was born. In those days the upper storeys of most of the buildings projected over the street, supported on brackets of stone or of wood, until in 1536 peremptory orders were given to demolish all the over-hanging façades in Via Larga and to rebuild them straight up from the ground floor, for the entrance into the city of Margarita of Austria, the bride of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici. The house was sold by Ferdinando II. to the Ughi, and after changing hands several times was bought by Giovacchino Rossini, to whose memory an inscription was placed on the front of the house. It now belongs to Prince Ginori Conti.
The often repeated story that Lorenzino de’ Medici’s house was destroyed and a street, called the Chiasso del Traditore, made where it stood, is entirely opposed to all documentary evidence. In 1537 Lorenzino was condemned as a traitor and according to old custom the front of his house, or rather of the room in which he murdered his cousin Alessandro, was torn down. In 1568, 1604 and 1611, when the “old house” and that of Lorenzino passed from one member of the Medici family to another, the latter is always mentioned as “partly destroyed.” When the two houses were sold to Alamanno Ughi in 1646 the description runs: “a large house in Via Larga, with the destroyed part adjoining the said house and the rooms which are in the said destroyed part.” The new proprietor let the ground floor “under the ruined part of the small house” as a shop in 1648, but fifty years later the shop was turned into stables. It was only in 1736, as we learn from the Diario of Settimanni, that “Ughi finished restoring his house in Via Larga adjoining the palace of the Marchese Cosimo Riccardi. This was the house which belonged to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who exactly two hundred years ago murdered the Duke Alessandro.... Until this restoration the hole, over sixteen braccie wide, which had been made in the front of the house was to be seen.” There is no mention of any street, nor of any prohibition as to building on the site of the house in which the murder had been committed. Signor Corrazzini however states that Ughi, having heard a rumour that some such prohibition existed, petitioned the Grand Duke to affirm that he and his heirs were at liberty to build on the site as they pleased, and this Ferdinando did.37 The house is No. 5. Via Cavour, with three windows, wedged in between the Palazzo Riccardi and the palace of Prince Ginori Conti.