Today the medieval Palace of the Chief Magistrate is the seat of the municipal library. It probably dates back to the mid-13th century and was already quite damaged in the early twentieth century. Another very serious damage was caused by the earthquake of June 1919, a circumstance that made the restorations even more urgent. However, we have to wait for 1934 to have a real intervention, thanks to the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, whose president was the Marshal of Italy Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi. The restorations, designed and directed by the engineer Augusto Lorini, who changed the lines of the building…
Author: Paolo Guidotti
The Viale della Repubblica is the result of the building expansion of the town towards the railway station, which took place in the early years of the twentieth century. Formerly named as Viale Umberto I, it presents notable and numerous architectural decorations in the villas and the buildings along the street, attributable to the Fornaci San Lorenzo.At street number 41, a small villa bears on the upper part of the façade, two square tiles in slight relief depicting a stylized flower, and crowned by a series of painted triangles; on the opposite side of the street, another façade shows a simple decoration…
The current appearance of the Cemetery of Mercy is the result of changes that occurred in the first thirty years of the 1900s; above all, we remember those described in the numerous projects and drawings by the engineers Niccolò Niccolai and Severino Crott, and architect Ugo Giusti, preserved in the Confraternity Archive. From this documentation, we can deduce that the place should have assumed the appearance of a real monumental cemetery, while the achievements were then always limited to enlargement and rearrangement of the burial areas. In the area of the Main Chapel, there is a series of tombstones decorated…
The villa was built by Chino Chini around 1923, as a residence for himself and his family in Borgo San Lorenzo, near the Fornaci San Lorenzo. At that time, in fact, Chino took care of the manufacturing and therefore he had the need to live close by. It is an original construction in stone and brick, quite freely inspired by the neo-Gothic models that have been spreading since the beginning of the 20th century.The exterior is decorated with numerous tiles from the production of the Fornaci, especially from the repertoire created for the recent monumental decorative enterprise of the Berzieri Baths of Salsomaggiore…
This building was designed by the engineer Severino Crott in 1928 and inaugurated in 1930 as the headquarters of the Casa del Fascio (House of Fascism). The large ceramic eagle in relief and the polychrome glass still preserved on the façade were made by the Chini manufacture; its severe style was imposed by the regime which later even banned the decorations of the exterior. Unfortunately, the decoration of the room that housed the cinema inside the building also made with the materials of the Fornaci, has been lost; but the local press described that as a sumptuous environment: “a wonderful harmony of…
In 1906 Galileo Chini, who, together with his cousin Chino, had founded the Fornaci San Lorenzo in that year, participates in an important restoration campaign inside the millenary Romanesque church of San Lorenzo.The large painting in the apse is surely the most demanding of his works, depicting Christ the Redeemer enthroned between Saints Lorenzo and Martino, ancient protectors of the Municipality of Borgo San Lorenzo. This is probably one of the first artistic experiments of Galileo in Mugello (at least after the foundation of the Fornaci), but a clear sign of his fame in his native land.The painting highlights some important elements of his art.…
Along Via San Francesco, on the facade of the chapel of the monastery of Santa Caterina it is possible to see a polychrome ceramic lunette depicting the meeting between St. Francis and St. Dominic. The figures of the two Saints stand out on a golden background, surrounded by a decorative band with a broken line motif; this is also referable to the production of the San Lorenzo furnaces for the Franciscan celebrations in 1926.© Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello
The foundation of the convent and the church of San Carlo, held by the Capuchin order, dates back to the early 1600s on the initiative of some gentlemen from Florence, who owned estates in Mugello and who in 1612 asked the “Podesteria” of Borgo San Lorenzo a place where they would have provided themselves for the construction of the new convent entrusted to the Capuchins.On the architrave of the entrance door of the church, above which is also painted a small head of St. Francis, “in memory of the Count Giovanni Collalto”, there is an inscription dated 1613, stated as…
The villa of Rimorelli, known as Villa Pecori Giraldi, from the name of the noble Florentine family who owned it for a long time, was donated in 1979 to the municipality of Borgo San Lorenzo.The large building is originally medieval and was built as a fortress of the Giraldi family, originally from Borgo San Lorenzo. In 1748, it became the property of Count Antonio Pecori, adding from that moment onwards ‘Giraldi’ to his surname. The building was restored thanks to the intervention of the General Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi in 1902. The villa has two floors, with a Renaissance-style facade and…
La chiesa di Santa Maria a Soli, nelle campagne di Galliano, di impianto romanico, è costruita in bel filaretto regolare con robusti contrafforti, vi è una nicchia con una terracotta, originariamente smaltata, e ha la facciata a capanna con portale in pietra sormontato da una Madonna col Bambino, mentre poco sopra un rosone circolare dà luce all’interno. Sul retro una piccola abside finestrata di antico impianto e un campaniletto a vela che ha sostituito quello originale demolito nel 1756.
