Florence’s WW2 Liberation: A Virtual Uffizi Exhibition

 

Displaced Florence residents arriving in the Boboli Gardens in August 1944 before the bridges (except for Ponte Vecchio) and riverside buildings were blown up

A  virtual exhibition created by the Uffizi Galleries commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Night of the Bridges, a crucial moment in the history of 20th century Florence. Through the photos of Nello Baroni, it gives a vivid account of the dramatic days preceding their destruction by the Nazis in an attempt to prevent the advance of the Allied armies, and the consequent evacuation of residents from the historic center to the the Palazzo Pitti complex.

On Saturday, July 29, 1944, the German command issued an order requiring citizens to evacuate the streets and squares around the Arno by 12 noon the following day.

From that moment on, hand-pulled carts poured out onto Via Guicciardini and the surrounding streets, destination Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens. More than 5,000 Florentines arrived, who had been forced to abandon their homes with the few things they had managed to save.

At 4 pm on Tuesday, August 1, the Pitti Palace and the Boboli gardens became off-limits and it was forbidden to open the windows overlooking the square, while during the night the Germans began to place mines to destroy the bridges and houses on the Lungarni (the streets along the Arno).

The original Ponte Santa Trinità, designed by Michelangelo, before its destruction by the retreating Nazi army

Among those who found refuge in the palace was Nello Baroni (Florence 1906-1958) with his family and friends and fellow architects Italo Gamberini, Giovanni Michelucci and Edoardo Detti. Baroni documented a dramatic moment in Florentine history; his photos are currently preserved in the Uffizi Drawing and Prints Department, the State Archives of Florence and the Tuscan Historical Institute of the Resistance. Later, Baroni also would write his memoirs, “The Diary of the Five Thousand,” in which he recounts what he witnessed between Saturday, July 29 and Friday, August 4, 1944, which culminated in the blowing up of all the bridges, except for Ponte Vecchio, and many medieval buildings on the riverfront.

“The Republic of Pitti [was] a dream,” Anna Banti (Florence, 1895 – Ronchi di Massa, 1985) would write years later. She, too, took refuge in Pitti Palace, while German mines demolished her home in Borgo San Jacopo.  The author recalls those extraordinary days with particular emotional intensity in “Veglie di Pitti” and in the novel “Artemisia,” lost in the destruction and then rewritten after the war.

Through careful research work in various archives and thanks to the collaboration of the State Archives of Florence, the Tuscan Historical Institute of the Resistance and the Roberto Longhi Foundation, the virtual exhibition of the Baroni’s photos, presented for the first time ever, in addition to a podcast, brings the events of that period to life.