[0] The Palazzo Vecchio was originally called the Palazzo dei Priori Novo (New Palace of the Priors) after the ruling body (Priori) of the Florentine Commune. Built beginning in 1299, it provided a location for the ruling body that was equal to the importance of Florence, then the most powerful and wealthy city in the West. Before its construction, the Priori met in a house behind a church, not exactly a location of grandeur suitable for the Florentine Priori.
'After the battle of Montaperti in 1260, when the Ghibellines (who supported the Holy Roman Emperor) defeated the Florentine Guelphs (who supported the Pope), the Ghibellines in Florence led by the Uberti clan restored the old institutions and destroyed the palazzos, houses and towers of their Guelph enemies. When the Guelphs recovered control over the city six years later, they destroyed the palaces and homes of the Uberti clan and permanently banished them from the city, leaving their homes in rubble for many years. Finally, the Florentines cleared the rubble, bought up surrounding homes and towers, and built Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio on the ruins of the Palazzo dei Fanti and the Palazzo dell’Esecutore di Giustizia (Executor of Justice), to ensure that the Uberti would never return to Florence (they had completely erased the Uberti clan’s ancestral homes, castles and property). They also decreed that no building would ever again stand in the accursed space occupied by the Uberti properties, which is why the Palazzo Vecchio is not centered in the Piazza, as would normally be expected (it is on the edge).'[Architecture and Art of the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace)]
[1] 'To this day, the squares characterize the appearance of Florence. From a historical perspective, their development was linked to various factors. Thus the Piazza and Palazzo della Signoria became a centre of political authority to counterbalance the ecclesiastic power at the cathedral. Smaller squares emerged in front of the main churches and at road junctions. The large forecourts of the converts that settled outside the second city wall brought a new type of square along during the formidable rise of the mendicant orders in the 13th century – they all formed spaces of religious, social, economic and cultural life from this point on. During the Renaissance, the targeted structuring of urban space became a central focus of architecture: The most famous example of this is the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata with Brunelleschi’s portico. This and other Florentine squares were common motifs in print reproductions. In character, some of the views shown here go back to the series of etchings from Giuseppe Zocchi’s “Scelta di XXIV Vedute”, which appeared in 1744 and enjoyed huge success. '
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz | Squares
Address: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Via Giuseppe Giusti 44, 50121 Firenze
[2] Girolamo Savonarola (21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498) was an Italian Dominican friar, Scholastic, and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and what he thought the Renaissance—which began in his Florence—ought to become. He preached vehemently against the moral corruption of much of the clergy at the time. His main opponent was Rodrigo Borgia, who was Pope Alexander VI from 1492, through Savonarola's death in 1498.

After Charles VIII of France invaded Florence in 1494, the ruling Medici were overthrown and Savonarola emerged as the new leader of the city, combining in himself the role of leader and priest. He set up a republic in Florence. Characterizing it as a “Christian and religious Republic,” one of its first acts was to make sodomy, previously punishable by fine, into a capital offence. Homosexuality had previously been tolerated in the city, and many homosexuals from the elite now chose to leave Florence. His chief enemies were the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, and Pope Alexander VI, who issued numerous restraints against him, all of which were subsequently ignored.

In 1497, he and his followers carried out the Bonfire of the Vanities. They sent boys from door to door collecting items associated with moral laxity: mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures (which he wanted to be replaced by statues of the saints and modest depictions of biblical scenes), gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women’s hats, and the works of immoral and ancient poets, and burnt them all in a large pile in the Piazza della Signoria of Florence.[2] Many fine Florentine Renaissance artworks were lost in Savonarola’s notorious bonfires — including paintings by Sandro Botticelli, which he is alleged to have thrown into the fires himself.[3]
Florence soon became tired of Savonarola because of the city’s continual political and economic miseries partially derived from Savonarola's opposition to trading and making money. When a Franciscan preacher challenged him to a trial by fire in the city centre and he declined, his following began to dissipate.
During his Ascension Day sermon on May 4, 1497, bands of youths rioted, and the riot became a revolt: dancing and singing taverns reopened, and men again dared to gamble publicly.

On May 13, 1497, Savonarola was excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, and in 1498, Alexander demanded his arrest and execution. On April 8, a crowd attacked the Convent of San Marco. In the ensuing struggle, several of Savonarola’s guards and religious supporters were killed. Savonarola surrendered along with Fra Domenico da Pescia and Fra Silvestro, his two closest associates. Savonarola was charged with heresy, uttering prophecies, sedition, and other crimes, called religious errors by the Borgia pope.

During the next few weeks all three were tortured on the rack, the torturers sparing only Savonarola’s right arm in order that he might be able to sign his confession. All three signed confessions, Savonarola doing so sometime before May 8. On that day he completed a written meditation on the Miserere mei, Psalm 50, entitled Infelix ego, in which he pleaded with God for mercy for his physical weakness in confessing to crimes he believed he did not commit. On the day of his execution, May 23, 1498, he was still working on another meditation, this one on Psalm 31, entitled Tristitia obsedit me.[4]

On the day of his execution he was taken out to the Piazza della Signoria along with Fra Silvestro and Fra Domenico da Pescia. The three were ritually stripped of their clerical vestments, degraded as "heretics and schismatics", and given over to the secular authorities to be burned. The three were hanged in chains from a single cross and an enormous fire was lit beneath them. They were thereby executed in the same place where the Bonfire of the Vanities had been lit, and in the same manner that Savonarola had condemned other criminals during his own reign in Florence.

Jacopo Nardi, who recorded the incident in his Istorie della città di Firenze, wrote that his executioner lit the flame exclaiming, “The one who wanted to burn me is now himself put to the flames.” Luca Landucci, who was present, wrote in his diary that the burning took several hours, and that the remains were several times broken apart and mixed with brushwood so that not the slightest piece could be later recovered, as the ecclesiastical authorities did not want Savonarola’s followers to have any relics for a future generation of the rigorist preacher they considered a saint. The ashes of the three were afterwards thrown in the Arno beside the Ponte Vecchio.[5]

Nevertheless, the Frateschi party and her governo popolare revived until July 1499, when the French occupation of Milan began to favour it again. It was not until 1512 that the Medici returned with Spanish help, following the latest decline of the French
[3] Source: www.wga.hu