The Santa Trìnita bridge is a bridge in Florence. It has been
described by Giovanni Spadolini, who was born in Florence, as one of
the most beautiful bridges in all of Italy and as among the most
elegant in Europe. It connects Piazza Santa Trinita to Piazza de'
Frescobaldi, with two important palaces at each bridgehead: Palazzo
Spini Feroni to the north and Palazzo della Missione to the south.
Like the nearby basilica of Santa Trinita and the square of the
same name, the pronunciation of the name of the bridge has kept the
accent on the first "i", according to Latin usage.
It was built in wood in 1252, thanks to the podestà Filippo Ugoni
with the patronage of the Frescobaldi family, taking its name from the
nearby Basilica of Santa Trìnita (with the accent moved to the first
syllable), but collapsed after a few years, in 1259 under the weight of
the crowd attending a show on the Arno. It was rebuilt in stone, but
gave way under the pressure of the great flood of 1333 which spared only
the Ponte alle Grazie. The subsequent rebuilding was slow and lasted
fifty years, from 1356 to 1415.
The new destruction of 1557,
again due to a flood, led to the construction of today's structure. The
design, commissioned by Cosimo I, was by Bartolomeo Ammannati, based on
a design by Michelangelo, who suggested the modern line of the three
arches, referring to his studies, already put into practice in the tombs
of the Medici Chapels and in the stairway of the vestibule of the
Laurentian Library. This curved line is an innovation that anticipates
the Baroque fashion and also has an important technical aspect, because
it has a remarkable static resistance; it has the shape of a catenary
arch, the upside-down version of the figure that draws a suspended chain
for its two ends, and which resembles a parabola.
The
construction took place between 1567 and 1571, in yellowish-brown strong
stone. In addition to the aforementioned line of arches, the bridge also
owes its elegance to the support pylons, which have a horizontal section
with acute angles to prevent the trunks from getting caught in the white
cartouches on the arches and the four allegorical statues that decorate
the corners and which depict the four seasons: placed in 1608, they are
the work of Pietro Francavilla (Spring), Taddeo Landini (Winter) and
Giovanni Caccini (Summer and Autumn) and celebrated the wedding of
Cosimo II with Maria Maddalena of Austria.
Until the first
decades of the twentieth century, on 11 November, for the feast of San
Martino, the characteristic fair of the "trabiccoli" was held on the
bridge and on the initial part of the adjacent via Maggio, the domes
made of wooden slats used to heat or dry cloths or sheets with a warmer.
The "fierucola di San Martino", animated by the calls of the vendors,
was made up of small trade and poor craftsmanship.
The bridge was
destroyed by the retreating Germans on August 4, 1944. On the idea of
the Florentine antiquarian Luigi Bellini, a "How It Was and Where It
Was" committee was created for its reconstruction, so as to return it to
Florence. In 1952 the architect Riccardo Gizdulich was called to
supervise the reconstruction works, together with the engineer Emilio
Brizzi. The reconstructed bridge was opened on March 16, 1958.
In
1958, a Florentine sales agent, Giuseppe Fantacci, launched an
unscrupulous "marketing" campaign to return the head of Primavera, one
of the statues that stand on the bridge itself, to Florence. The head
had in fact been stolen before the end of the Second World War,
effectively leaving the statue mutilated. Fantacci's idea was to involve
the company he worked for - the American company Parker, a pen
manufacturer, then based in Florence - to promote an initiative,
sponsored, in the newspaper La Nazione to find the head of the statue.
With the headline "Who has seen this woman?", the news was published
in the press all over the world. The newspapers of Singapore, South
Africa, Australia, Argentina, Eritrea, Rhodesia, Thailand spoke about
it.
The four statues were fished out of the Arno once the war was
over, but at first, as previously mentioned, the head of Primavera was
not found. In the sixties the same antiquarian Bellini posted a notice
promising a reward of 3000 dollars for the discovery of the head, which
was finally found by the "renaioli" in 1961.
The missing head
provided the inspiration for Spike Lee's film Miracle at St. Anna
(2008).