Piazza d’Azeglio tells one of the most revealing stories of Florence’s nineteenth-century transformation. Today, its leafy central garden and elegant surrounding buildings create the atmosphere of a quiet residential neighbourhood only a short walk from the historic centre. In the 1860s, however, this part of Florence was changing with extraordinary speed.
Much of the land east of the old city belonged to the area known as the Mattonaia, characterised by gardens, fields, workshops and relatively open spaces. Plans for a new residential district had begun before Florence became the capital of Italy, but the arrival of the national government in 1865 created enormous pressure for housing and accelerated the city’s expansion.
District: Former Mattonaia area
Main period: 1860s–1870s
Historical context: Firenze Capitale
Planning began: Before 1865
Key pressure: Rapid population growth and housing demand
Urban character: Garden square and nineteenth-century residential architecture
Nearby landmark: Piazza Beccaria and Porta alla Croce
Why it matters: Piazza d’Azeglio shows how Firenze Capitale transformed everyday residential Florence
This article focuses on the residential expansion east of the historic centre. For the wider story, see our Florence as Capital of Italy – Firenze Capitale 1865–1871 and How Firenze Capitale Transformed Florence.
Before Piazza d’Azeglio: The Mattonaia
To understand Piazza d’Azeglio, it helps to imagine Florence before its great nineteenth-century expansion.
The historic city was still strongly defined by medieval walls. Beyond them, the landscape quickly became more open, with gardens, agricultural land, workshops, villas and scattered buildings occupying areas that would later be fully integrated into Florence.
East of the historic centre lay the Mattonaia, an area whose name was associated with brickmaking and the kilns that operated there.
Its relatively open land made it a natural direction for expansion as Florence’s population grew and planners increasingly looked beyond the traditional urban boundaries.
What is now a fully urban neighbourhood was still undergoing a fundamental transition in the middle of the nineteenth century. Fields, workshops and construction sites were gradually replaced by streets, apartment blocks and residential squares.
The Plans Began Before Firenze Capitale
It would be misleading to say that Piazza d’Azeglio was created entirely because Florence became capital in 1865.
Plans for developing the Mattonaia area were already taking shape beforehand, and construction activity had begun while Florence was still the capital of Tuscany rather than of the Kingdom of Italy.
Then came the political decision that changed the scale and urgency of the process.
The September Convention of 1864 opened the way for transferring the national capital from Turin to Florence. The city suddenly had only a short time to prepare for a radically different role.
Piazza d’Azeglio was not conceived from nothing after 1865. Firenze Capitale accelerated a process of urban development that was already underway in the Mattonaia.
A Capital Facing a Housing Crisis
The transformation quickly became a practical necessity.
Florence had roughly 120,000 inhabitants on the eve of the transfer, while tens of thousands of additional residents were expected because of the arrival of ministries, civil servants, politicians, employees and their families.
The city could not absorb such an increase without severe pressure on housing.
Rents rose sharply, and affordable accommodation became difficult to find. Temporary solutions included housing some families in convents and in prefabricated structures outside parts of the old city.
The expansion of districts such as the Mattonaia therefore cannot be understood simply as architectural modernisation. Florence urgently needed places for people to live.
The sudden arrival of government employees and their families created one of the most immediate problems of Firenze Capitale: Florence had to build housing almost as quickly as it built offices and infrastructure.
Giuseppe Poggi and the Expansion of Florence
Florence began preparing even before the formal transfer of the capital.
Architect Giuseppe Poggi received responsibility for the city’s major enlargement plan and worked with remarkable speed during the first months of 1865.
His proposals envisioned a much larger Florence capable of accommodating tens of thousands of additional inhabitants.
The plan extended far beyond housing. Roads, drainage, sewerage, flood protection and connections between the historic centre and new neighbourhoods all formed part of the larger transformation.
Poggi’s urban vision is explored in more detail in How Firenze Capitale Transformed Florence.
More Than New Houses
The rapid expansion forced Florence to think like a modern city.
New neighbourhoods required infrastructure, not simply buildings. Roads had to connect residential areas with the historic centre, while drainage and sewerage systems needed to serve a much larger population.
The devastating flood of 1864 had also demonstrated the importance of water management.
Urban modernisation therefore involved a combination of housing, engineering and public health.
Firenze Capitale changed Florence at every scale: from national politics to sewers, roads and apartment blocks. Piazza d’Azeglio belongs to this less glamorous but essential side of the story.
The Mattonaia Becomes a New Urban District
The Mattonaia illustrates this transformation particularly clearly.
Open and semi-rural land east of the historic centre gradually became part of a much larger urban district. New streets and residential buildings occupied areas that only a short time earlier had stood beyond the dense fabric of old Florence.
Piazza d’Azeglio emerged within this changing environment.
Unlike many medieval streets that had developed gradually across centuries, the new district reflected more systematic planning and rapid nineteenth-century construction.
The contrast remains visible today. Walking east from Santa Croce, the tightly woven historic city gradually gives way to more regular façades and a different urban rhythm.
A Historic Photograph Captures the Transformation
One of the most revealing records of the district is a photograph preserved in the Archivio Storico del Comune di Firenze and dating from around 1868–1870.
Rather than showing a completed neighbourhood, it captures Florence while the Mattonaia was still becoming part of the city.
Open ground, construction materials, unfinished streets and new residential buildings are visible together.
The photograph is valuable precisely because it removes the illusion that Florence’s nineteenth-century neighbourhoods had always existed in their present form.
Historical photographs of the Mattonaia show Florence at the moment when countryside, workshops and construction sites were being transformed into the residential city we recognise today.
Piazza d’Azeglio as a Garden Square
At the heart of the new neighbourhood appeared a very different kind of Florentine piazza.
Unlike Piazza della Signoria, Piazza Santa Croce or other monumental historic spaces, Piazza d’Azeglio was organised around a landscaped central garden.
Lawns, trees, paths and enclosed greenery created a residential environment rather than a ceremonial or commercial square.
This reflected changing nineteenth-century ideas about urban life, in which green space and residential comfort became increasingly important.
Compare Piazza d’Azeglio with Florence’s great historic piazzas. Here, greenery rather than a church, palace or paved civic space defines the centre.
European Influences on the New Florence
The transformation of Florence did not occur in isolation.
Nineteenth-century planners across Europe were experimenting with boulevards, garden squares, improved traffic circulation and new residential neighbourhoods.
Poggi knew developments in other European cities and adapted different approaches to Florentine conditions.
The Viali di Circonvallazione reflected the influence of large continental boulevard systems, while other elements of the expansion incorporated more picturesque ideas involving greenery, changing perspectives and landscape.
Piazza d’Azeglio belongs to this wider European context, although its development should not be described simplistically as a personal Poggi design in every detail.
A New Residential Florence
The neighbourhood around Piazza d’Azeglio represented a very different urban experience from medieval and Renaissance Florence.
Streets followed a more regular pattern, while new apartment buildings, palazzi and villini offered accommodation within the expanding city.
The architecture reflected the needs of a changing population. Some residences were prestigious, while the broader urban expansion also served civil servants, professionals, employees and other groups drawn to the new capital.
Firenze Capitale therefore did not create one homogeneous new Florence. Different districts developed with different densities, social characters and architectural forms.
Palazzi and Villini Around Piazza d’Azeglio
The buildings surrounding Piazza d’Azeglio help define its distinctive character.
Alongside substantial urban blocks appeared villini and elegant residences belonging unmistakably to the architectural language of the nineteenth century.
Regular façades, balconies and decorative details differ markedly from the massive rusticated palaces associated with Renaissance Florence.
Among the buildings connected with the early development of the area are the Villini Servadio, dating from the years of Firenze Capitale.
Do not look only at the garden. Walk around the entire perimeter of Piazza d’Azeglio and study the surrounding façades. The square is the centre of a complete nineteenth-century residential neighbourhood.
New Streets for a New District
A new neighbourhood required connections with both the historic centre and Florence’s emerging circulation system.
Existing roads were extended and new streets opened through the Mattonaia area.
To the east, Piazza Beccaria and the Viali di Circonvallazione became one of the most important interfaces between old Florence and the new city.
The Viali were more than traffic routes. They formed a hinge between the compact historic centre and the expanding residential districts beyond it.
Piazza Beccaria and Porta alla Croce
Nearby Piazza Beccaria makes the transformation particularly easy to understand.
Porta alla Croce once formed part of the continuous medieval wall circuit. After the surrounding fortifications were demolished, the gate remained at the centre of a broad nineteenth-century urban space.
The contrast with Piazza d’Azeglio is useful.
Piazza Beccaria represents the monumental reorganisation of the former defensive boundary, while Piazza d’Azeglio represents the residential city developing immediately beyond it.
Together, they show two complementary aspects of Firenze Capitale.
A Different Side of Firenze Capitale
The great projects of Firenze Capitale can make the period seem primarily a story of monumental urban planning.
The walls were demolished, the Viali changed Florence’s geography and Piazzale Michelangelo created one of Italy’s most famous panoramic viewpoints.
Piazza d’Azeglio reveals another side of the same transformation.
Political decisions taken at national level ultimately affected where people lived, how neighbourhoods were designed and how Florence expanded beyond boundaries that had defined the city for centuries.
Here, the legacy of Firenze Capitale is not one spectacular monument. It is the urban fabric itself.
When the Capital Moved to Rome
The transformation was still underway when Florence lost the political role that had driven it.
After Rome became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, the national government moved there in 1871.
Many projects associated with Florence’s expansion were still incomplete, and work continued during the following years.
The municipality also faced serious financial difficulties after investing heavily in infrastructure and urban development for a capital that had existed for only a short time.
When Florence ceased to be Italy’s capital, several projects begun for Firenze Capitale were still unfinished. The physical transformation continued after the government had already moved to Rome.
From Firenze Capitale to Cosmopolitan Florence
The departure of the government did not erase the neighbourhood that had emerged.
Piazza d’Azeglio and the surrounding streets remained attractive residential areas close to the historic centre.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Florence developed another important identity as an international city of writers, artists, intellectuals and foreign residents.
The neighbourhood consequently acquired additional layers of social and cultural history beyond the original capital period.
The political capital lasted only six years. The residential city created around it proved far more permanent.
How to Explore Piazza d’Azeglio Today
Piazza d’Azeglio lies east of Florence’s historic centre and is easily reached on foot.
One of the most revealing approaches begins around Santa Croce and continues east towards the former Mattonaia district.
As you walk, notice how the city gradually changes. Dense historic streets give way to more regular nineteenth-century façades and a different relationship between buildings, streets and green space.
At Piazza d’Azeglio, walk around the perimeter rather than simply crossing the garden.
Then continue towards Piazza Beccaria, where Porta alla Croce and the Viali provide a direct visual connection with the larger urban transformation.
Santa Croce → Piazza d’Azeglio → Piazza Beccaria offers a short journey through three different layers of Florence: the medieval and Renaissance centre, the new residential city and the monumental planning of Firenze Capitale.
Why Piazza d’Azeglio Is Easy to Overlook
Piazza d’Azeglio rarely appears on lists of Florence’s essential monuments.
There is no cathedral, major Renaissance palace or internationally famous museum on the square.
Its historical importance lies instead in the neighbourhood itself.
That makes it especially valuable for visitors who want to understand Florence beyond its celebrated Renaissance image. The city did not stop evolving after the Medici, and the nineteenth century altered its physical structure on a remarkable scale.
Piazza d’Azeglio is one of the places where that transformation can still be read clearly.
Why Piazza d’Azeglio Is Worth Discovering
Piazza d’Azeglio is worth discovering because it reveals the residential side of Firenze Capitale.
The square emerged within an area transformed by population pressure, rapid construction and the need to expand Florence beyond its historic boundaries.
Its garden, surrounding architecture and relationship with the former Mattonaia landscape tell a story very different from that of medieval churches and Renaissance palaces.
Here, modern Florence appears not through one grand monument but through streets, apartment buildings, green space and the everyday structure of a new neighbourhood.
More than 150 years after Florence ceased to be the national capital, Piazza d’Azeglio remains part of the city created during one of the most intense periods of urban change in its history.
Piazza d’Azeglio shows that the legacy of Firenze Capitale is not only found in grand avenues and viewpoints. It also survives in the neighbourhoods where modern Florentines began to live.
Further Reading on Firenze Casa
Continue exploring the urban transformation of Florence during Firenze Capitale:
- Florence as Capital of Italy – Firenze Capitale 1865–1871
- Why Florence Became the Capital of Italy in 1865
- How Firenze Capitale Transformed Florence
- Florence City Walls and the Viali di Circonvallazione
- Piazzale Michelangelo and Giuseppe Poggi
- Florence City Walls and Fortresses – Complete Guide
- The Historic Gates of Florence – From Porta Romana to San Niccolò
References
- Regione Toscana – Historical Documentation on Piazza Massimo d’Azeglio and Its Garden
- Comune di Firenze – Historical Documentation on Piazza d’Azeglio and the Mattonaia District
- Archivio Storico del Comune di Firenze – Historical Documentation and Photograph of the Mattonaia During Construction, ca. 1868–1870
- Palazzo Spinelli – Repertorio delle Architetture Civili di Firenze, Piazza d’Azeglio and Surrounding Buildings
- Belli, Gianluca – “Febbraio 1865: il piano di Giuseppe Poggi per Firenze capitale”
- Poggi, Giuseppe – Sui lavori per l’ingrandimento di Firenze, 1864–1877
- Pesci, Ugo – Firenze Capitale (1865–1870)
- Borsi, Franco – La capitale a Firenze e l’opera di G. Poggi
- Fei, Sergio – Nascita e sviluppo di Firenze città borghese
