Only a few steps from Ponte Vecchio, Borgo San Jacopo preserves a very different Florence. Among its narrow streets and later buildings stand surviving medieval tower houses that recall a time when powerful families protected their homes, displayed their status and competed for influence within the city.
The Barbadori Towers Florence are among the most interesting survivors. Two buildings in Borgo San Jacopo belonged to the Barbadori family, a wealthy Florentine merchant family whose presence in the Oltrarno can also be traced to nearby Santa Felicita.
Location: Borgo San Jacopo, Oltrarno
Main tower: Borgo San Jacopo 54r
Second Barbadori tower: Borgo San Jacopo 22–24
Origins: Medieval Florence; the main tower is traditionally dated to the 12th century
Family: Barbadori, Florentine merchants and members of the Guelph faction
Best for: Medieval architecture, hidden Florence and urban history
Time needed: 10–20 minutes as part of an Oltrarno walk
Good combination: Ponte Vecchio → Borgo San Jacopo → Santa Felicita → Palazzo Pitti
Why Visit the Barbadori Towers?
Florence is so strongly associated with the Renaissance that it is easy to forget how medieval the city once looked. Before Renaissance palaces transformed its streets, powerful families lived in fortified houses and towers.
Borgo San Jacopo is one of the best places to recover that older city. Within a short stretch you can identify several surviving tower houses linked to families such as the Barbadori, Belfredelli, Ramaglianti and Angiolieri.
The Barbadori Towers are particularly useful because they are not isolated monuments. They remain embedded in a street that still preserves something of the dense scale of medieval Florence.
Do not simply cross Ponte Vecchio and continue directly towards Palazzo Pitti. Turn into Borgo San Jacopo and walk slowly. Within a few minutes, the Renaissance image of Florence begins to give way to an older city of stone towers, narrow passages and family strongholds.
Where Are the Barbadori Towers?
The two surviving buildings associated with the Barbadori stand in Borgo San Jacopo, immediately south of the Arno in the Oltrarno.
The most prominent stands at Borgo San Jacopo 54r, beside the small Piazzetta degli Angiolieri. It faces the Torre dei Belfredelli and fits easily into a short exploration of this medieval street.
A second Barbadori tower survives at Borgo San Jacopo 22–24. Historical records also connect this building with the Angiolieri and later the Serragli family.
Neither tower functions as a conventional visitor attraction. Their value lies in seeing them from the street and understanding how they fitted into the urban landscape of medieval Florence.
The Barbadori Towers are buildings to observe from outside rather than museums to enter. This makes them particularly easy to add to a walk through the Oltrarno without reservations, tickets or additional planning.
Borgo San Jacopo – A Street of Medieval Towers
Borgo San Jacopo runs westwards from the area around Ponte Vecchio. Today it is a relatively short street, but during the Middle Ages it belonged to one of the early settlements of the Oltrarno.
By the 13th century, families had built densely along the street. Important households established houses and towers here, including the Barbadori, Belfredelli, Ramaglianti, Angiolieri and Rossi.
The result looked very different from the harmonious Renaissance streets that visitors often associate with Florence. Tall stone buildings stood close together, while narrow passages connected homes, workshops and family properties.
Borgo San Jacopo remains particularly valuable because several medieval towers still survive within a remarkably small area. Our Medieval Florence Walking Tour places these structures within the wider story of Florence before the Renaissance.
Why Did Florentine Families Build Towers?
A medieval tower house served several purposes at once.
Protection was one important reason. Florence repeatedly experienced family rivalries, political violence and conflicts between factions. A strongly built stone residence could provide greater security than an ordinary house.
Height also expressed status. A tower announced the presence and resources of a family within its neighbourhood, while groups of related buildings could create a physical centre of family power.
Towers also formed part of wider residential complexes. We should not imagine every tower as an isolated miniature fortress. Houses, workshops, courtyards and other family properties often surrounded or connected with them.
Look for thick stone walls, narrow façades, irregular openings and rows of small holes in the masonry. These details can reveal a medieval tower even when later alterations have made the building less obvious.
The Main Barbadori Tower at Borgo San Jacopo 54r
The best-known Torre dei Barbadori stands at Borgo San Jacopo 54r. Historians generally trace its construction back to the 12th century.
One of its most revealing features is the arrangement of its historic entrances. At ground level is a doorway beneath a low arch. Higher up, another opening with a pointed arch appears to have served as the principal medieval entrance.
A removable wooden staircase or ladder could provide access to this elevated doorway. In periods of danger, the inhabitants could remove it and make entry considerably more difficult.
The masonry also preserves rows of buche pontaie – holes associated with wooden structural elements and scaffolding used during construction and later building work. Higher windows reflect subsequent alterations that brought more light into rooms originally much more enclosed.
These details help visitors understand how a medieval Florentine residence actually worked rather than seeing it simply as a picturesque old building.
Why the Tower Is Lower Than It Once Was
Florence’s family towers could not rise indefinitely.
During the 13th century, the commune attempted to control the power and visual dominance of the great families. Municipal regulations restricted the height of private towers and forced owners to reduce many of them.
The Barbadori belonged to the Guelph faction, and the changing civic rules governing private fortifications also affected their tower.
Consequently, the structure we see today does not preserve its full medieval height. The same applies to many surviving tower houses throughout Florence.
This physical change reflects a larger political transformation. Civic government increasingly asserted its authority over families whose private buildings had once dominated the skyline.
The Barbadori and the Guelphs
The architecture cannot be separated from medieval politics.
The Barbadori belonged to the Guelph faction. During the 13th century, rival Guelph and Ghibelline families deeply divided Florence. Although the conflict formed part of the broader struggle between papal and imperial interests, local rivalries, family alliances and economic competition were equally important.
Victory or defeat could have very physical consequences. Exile, confiscation and deliberate damage to an opponent’s property all formed part of Florentine political conflict.
This is why surviving family towers matter. They provide architectural evidence of a city in which political identity could affect where people lived, who their neighbours were and whether their homes survived a change of power.
Our guide to the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence explains this turbulent background in greater detail.
The Second Barbadori Tower
The Barbadori presence in Borgo San Jacopo was not limited to a single building.
A second tower survives at numbers 22–24. Historical documentation connects it with a house belonging to Donato Barbadori, while other families later acquired the property.
Architect Luigi Zumkeller restored the building in 1926–1927. Its later history became still more dramatic during the Second World War.
The destruction around the Ponte Vecchio area in 1944 left only part of the historic complex standing. Restorers subsequently repaired the surviving tower and reconstructed an adjoining section.
For visitors, this is an important reminder: what appears medieval in Florence may contain medieval fabric, later restoration and modern reconstruction within the same streetscape.
Do not expect both Barbadori towers to appear identical. Centuries of alterations, restoration and wartime destruction changed the buildings differently. Their history is written in the contrast between surviving medieval masonry and later interventions.
Restoration and the Medieval Image of Florence
The main tower at number 54r also underwent significant restoration. In 1929, Luigi Zumkeller, assisted by Giuseppe Baldacci, worked on the building and removed later plaster and additions from its façade.
Such interventions require some caution when we look at historic Florence today. Early 20th-century restorers often wanted to reveal – and sometimes reinforce – what they regarded as the authentic medieval character of buildings.
The Second World War brought another dramatic change. During the German retreat from Florence in August 1944, explosions devastated buildings around the approaches to Ponte Vecchio and damaged the Barbadori tower.
Ponte Vecchio itself survived, but the surrounding streets suffered enormous destruction. Post-war restorers therefore had to undertake substantial repairs to the tower and neighbouring buildings.
Its present appearance tells two stories: the medieval history of Borgo San Jacopo and Florence’s changing approach to preserving that history.
What Happened Here in 1944?
The survival of Borgo San Jacopo should not be taken for granted.
During the German retreat from Florence in August 1944, German forces destroyed the historic bridges across the Arno with the famous exception of Ponte Vecchio. They also mined and demolished buildings and streets around both ends of the bridge.
The Oltrarno approach suffered particularly severe damage. Historic houses disappeared, medieval structures sustained damage and the post-war city faced the difficult question of how to rebuild one of Florence’s oldest urban areas.
Walking through Borgo San Jacopo today therefore means looking at a mixture of survival and reconstruction. Our history of Ponte Vecchio explores the events of 1944 and the stories surrounding the bridge’s survival.
The Barbadori Family in the Oltrarno
The Barbadori were more than the owners of two towers. They were a merchant family with substantial interests in the Oltrarno and participated in the political life of the Florentine Republic.
Their presence can be followed through buildings, family patronage and religious foundations. This makes the towers especially interesting: they formed part of a wider network of family influence rather than standing as isolated residences.
One of the most important surviving connections lies only a few minutes away at Santa Felicita.
From the Barbadori Towers to Brunelleschi
Around 1420, Bartolomeo Barbadori commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi to create a family chapel in the nearby church of Santa Felicita.
Today we know it as the Barbadori-Capponi Chapel. Although later alterations changed Brunelleschi’s original architecture, the chapel remains an important part of his development of Renaissance architectural space.
Its history then took another remarkable turn. Patronage eventually passed to the Capponi family, and in 1525 Lodovico Capponi commissioned Jacopo Pontormo to redecorate it. The chapel today contains Pontormo’s celebrated Trasporto di Cristo, commonly known as the Deposition, together with his Annunciation.
This creates an extraordinary historical sequence within a few hundred metres: the medieval Barbadori towers lead to the family’s patronage of Brunelleschi and ultimately to one of the masterpieces of Florentine Mannerism.
Our Brunelleschi Florence Walking Tour includes the chapel and places it within the architect’s wider work in Florence.
See the Barbadori tower houses first and then walk to Santa Felicita. In less than ten minutes, you can move from the fortified world of medieval Florentine families to Brunelleschi’s early Renaissance architecture and Pontormo’s radical 16th-century painting.
What to Look for in Borgo San Jacopo
The Barbadori Towers become more rewarding when you stop looking for a single monument and start reading the whole street.
Notice how narrow many façades are. Compare rough stonework with later plastered buildings. Then look upwards for irregular windows, blocked openings and changes in masonry.
Nearby towers associated with the Belfredelli, Ramaglianti and Angiolieri demonstrate how concentrated family properties once were in this part of Florence.
Also pay attention to the relationship with the river. Borgo San Jacopo follows the Arno but does not have the broad riverside boulevard found elsewhere in central Florence. Buildings stand directly along the river, preserving an unusually dense urban arrangement.
The small opening around Piazzetta degli Angiolieri provides a welcome contrast and offers a glimpse back towards Ponte Vecchio.
A Short Medieval Walk from Ponte Vecchio
The easiest way to see the Barbadori Towers is to make them part of a short walk rather than treating them as a separate sightseeing destination.
Cross Ponte Vecchio from the historic centre and enter the Oltrarno. Instead of continuing immediately towards Palazzo Pitti, explore Borgo San Jacopo and its side streets.
Look for the surviving tower houses, then return towards Piazza Santa Felicita. From there, continue to Santa Felicita and the former Barbadori Chapel before heading onwards through the Oltrarno.
If medieval Florence particularly interests you, the longer Medieval Florence Walking Tour connects surviving towers and ancient streets across the historic centre.
Ponte Vecchio → Borgo San Jacopo → Barbadori Towers → Piazzetta degli Angiolieri → Santa Felicita. The route is short enough to fit easily between larger attractions and reveals several centuries of Florentine history within a remarkably compact area.
Are the Barbadori Towers Worth Seeing?
Yes – if you enjoy understanding the city rather than simply collecting major sights.
The Barbadori Towers are not spectacular monuments in the same sense as the Duomo or Palazzo Vecchio. There are no grand interiors to tour and no ticket to buy.
Their value is different. They help reconstruct a Florence that has largely disappeared: a dense medieval city dominated by powerful families, factional politics and fortified homes.
They are also exceptionally easy to see. Borgo San Jacopo lies immediately beside Ponte Vecchio, so visiting requires only a small detour from one of the busiest routes in Florence.
For travellers staying several days in the city, this kind of discovery can make familiar areas much more interesting. Ponte Vecchio stops being an isolated landmark and becomes the gateway to an older urban landscape on the southern bank of the Arno.
Why the Barbadori Towers Matter
Florence did not suddenly begin with the Renaissance. Brunelleschi, Donatello and the Medici inherited a city already shaped by centuries of commerce, political rivalry and powerful family networks.
The Barbadori Towers preserve part of that earlier world.
Their stone walls recall the defensive residences of medieval merchants. Their reduced height reflects the growing authority of the Florentine commune. Later alterations reveal changing ideas about domestic life, while restoration and wartime damage show how fragile the surviving medieval city has been.
Most importantly, the towers connect naturally with the surrounding neighbourhood. From Borgo San Jacopo, the Barbadori story continues to Santa Felicita and Brunelleschi before the streets lead onwards into Renaissance Florence.
Few short walks demonstrate the layers of Florence quite so clearly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where are the Barbadori Towers in Florence?
The two surviving buildings associated with the Barbadori family stand in Borgo San Jacopo in the Oltrarno. The best-known tower is at number 54r, while another survives at numbers 22–24.
How old are the Barbadori Towers?
The main Torre dei Barbadori at Borgo San Jacopo 54r dates back to the 12th century. Both buildings have undergone substantial alterations and restoration over the centuries.
Can you visit inside the Barbadori Towers?
Visitors normally view them from the street rather than enter them as conventional attractions. No museum visit is required to include the towers in a walk through Borgo San Jacopo.
Why did Florentine families build towers?
Tower houses combined residence, security and prestige. Powerful families built them especially during periods of political rivalry and factional conflict.
Were the Barbadori Guelphs or Ghibellines?
The Barbadori belonged to the Guelph faction. Their political world formed part of the wider struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline families in medieval Florence.
What is the connection between the Barbadori and Santa Felicita?
Bartolomeo Barbadori commissioned a family chapel in Santa Felicita from Filippo Brunelleschi around 1420. The chapel later passed to the Capponi family and became famous for Pontormo’s paintings.
What should I combine with the Barbadori Towers?
Ponte Vecchio and Santa Felicita form the most natural combination. The towers also fit easily into a longer exploration of the Oltrarno or a medieval Florence walking route.
Further Reading on Firenze Casa
- Medieval Florence Walking Tour – Towers & Ancient Streets
- The History of Ponte Vecchio – Florence’s Most Famous Bridge
- Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence – Medieval Rivalry
- Brunelleschi Florence Walking Tour – In His Footsteps
- Historic Palaces of Florence – Complete Guide
- Neighbourhoods of Florence – Complete Guide
References
- Comune di Firenze – FeelFlorence, Discovering the Tower-Houses
- Repertorio delle Architetture Civili di Firenze – Torre de’ Barbadori, Borgo San Jacopo 54r
- Repertorio delle Architetture Civili di Firenze – Torre de’ Barbadori, Borgo San Jacopo 22–24
- Claudio Paolini – Repertorio delle Architetture Civili di Firenze
- Lara Mercanti and Giovanni Straffi – Le torri di Firenze e del suo territorio
- Fortunato Grimaldi – Le case-torri di Firenze
