The old palace of the Lamberteschi, with which the tower of the ancient family of the Gherardini had been incorporated, was bought in 1640 by Anton Maria Bartolommei, and to it was added, according to an entry in the catasto, “in 1824 a building, called the tower of the Girolami, at the corner of Via Lambertesca and Via Por Santa Maria, bought by the Marquess Girolamo Bartolommei from the heirs of Count Covoni, whose wife was the last of the Girolami. According to tradition the progenitor of the Bartolommei was Marcovaldo, who came into Italy with the Emperor Frederick I., and was created Marquess of Ancona and Count of Romagna. His descendant Sigismondo was Captain of War in Perugia in 1358; beaten by the Pontifical troops, he fled to Florence, where his son Bartolommeo obtained the citizenship and gave his name to the family. His son Girolamo was implicated in the conspiracy against the Medici with Orazio Pucci and Zanobi Girolami, and sentenced to death in contumaciam; another son fled to Lyons, where he made a large fortune in trade, which eventually came back to the family. Thus Anton Maria was enabled to buy the palace and restore the adjoining church of S. Stefano. Girolamo de’ Bartolommei, a poet of the XVIIth century, was Consul of the Florentine Academy in 1648, and published two volumes of tragedies, but his best known work is America, a poem written in honour of Amerigo Vespucci. Mattia, created Marquess of Montegiove by Fernando II., was ambassador at Paris under Cosimo III., and from his son descended the late Marquess Ferdinando Bartolommei, last of the family, who was one of the factors of United Italy.20

The Gherardini, whose old tower was incorporated in the Lamberteschi palace, were Guelphs; many of them fought at Montaperti, while eight signed the peace of the Cardinal Latino in 1280. Andrea Gherardini, one of the leaders of the White Party, was exiled together with Dante, and his brother Lotteringo was killed in a street skirmish by adherents of Corso Donato. They were a fighting race; five of them fell at the battle of Montecatini in 1315, and the two last scions of the family died in battle, one in the Seven Years War in Germany, the other in Flanders. Passerini affirms that a Gherardini went to Ireland in the XIIIth century, and was the progenitor of the great family of the Fitzgeralds.21

The Girolami whose tower adjoins that of the Gherardini claimed S. Zenobius, Bishop of Florence in the VIth century, as belonging to their family, and on the 25th May his statue in a niche in the tower used to be decorated with garlands of flowers, with great ceremony and much blowing of trumpets. The family possessed the ring of the saint, held in such estimation as a wonder-working relic that Lorenzo the Magnificent sent it in 1482 to Paris to Louis XI. The king was cured of a severe illness after touching it, and sent it back in a jewelled box of great value which the Gherardini sold, and founded a rich canonry in Sta. Maria del Fiore with the proceeds. In 1523 Raffaello de’ Girolami was Gonfalonier of Justice, and five years later Commissary of War. Condemned to death after the capitulation of Florence, the sentence was commuted at the request of Don Ferrante Gonzaga to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Pisa, where he was poisoned by order of Pope Clement VII., as soon as the Imperialists left Tuscany. One of his sons fought as a lad against Cosimo I. at Siena under Strozzi, and was sentenced to lose his head, but escaped to France. Another obtained permission to return to Florence after long years of exile, and as all his estates had been confiscated, left nothing to his son save the family hatred of the Medici. He joined Orazio Pucci and Girolamo Bartolommei in conspiring against the Grand Duke, and was condemned to death in contumaciam. Raffaello de’ Girolami founded the Academy of the Sapienza in Rome, and became a Cardinal in 1743, and the last of the family died about forty years later, appointing the sons of his sister, married to Count Covoni, his heirs.