Progetto e percezione del palazzo pubblico nel tardo medioevo: il caso del Bargello di Firenze

One of the characteristics of the late medieval city is the continuous adaptation to changing demographic, economic, military and institutional needs, reflected in new form of public spaces and buildings. The relationship between architecture and the city must therefore be considered in a diachronic and elastic way. Thus even the canonical perception of the main monuments is often the result of a complex process. The project-construction cycle is repeated several times, modifying the initial intentions and adapting the result to the new conditions of the urban landscape. For better describing this dynamism, one of the most fruitful categories of analysis of architectural phenomena is still that of ‘urbatecture’, introduced by Bruno Zevi. Exemplary is the case of the Bargello Palace, one of the main Florentine public buildings, whose vision from the square occupies an important place in historiography.