Florence was scarcely free before she aspired to establish a town hall as a residence for a chief magistrate and a belfry to summon the populace. Whenever a community is formed in the North, or a republic is founded in the South, the yearning for a town hall and a belfry invariably becomes the foremost expression of its will, and fulfilling that yearning serves as the initial testament to its existence. Consequently, in 1298, merely sixteen years after the Florentines had secured their constitut ... (Read More)