Piazza del Duomo

In twelve ninety-six, the wealthy Florentine Bischeri family expected the city council to return with a more generous offer. Their houses stood by what is now the exit from Piazza del Duomo onto Via dell'Oriuolo. The land was needed for a new city cathedral church, and the Bischeri hoped to profit from the future construction: plots beside it were becoming more valuable, and the family rejected the first offers.

Several palaces and land in the very center of Florence were at stake. The Bischeri were not bargaining with a private buyer. The city council intended to replace the old cathedral church of Santa Reparata with a building so large that an entire block around it had to be cleared. Where you can now walk around the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore from the east, there were lanes, residential houses, and the church of San Michele Visdomini. Between Santa Reparata and the baptistery, a cemetery and a hospital were crowded together.

The council made the Bischeri several advantageous offers. The family continued to seek a larger sum. Then the officials stopped negotiating and confiscated the necessary real estate. The Bischeri lost their houses and the payment they could have received earlier.

Later, a story emerged that a conveniently timed fire destroyed their palaces. This is a legend; documents more reliably confirm the confiscation of property. Florentines associate the word “bischero” with the Bischeri's unsuccessful bargaining—this is still how a fool may be called here. The family survived the loss: at the end of the fourteenth century, three Bischeri even commissioned an altarpiece with their portraits, now in the cathedral museum. But the mockery proved more enduring than their medieval houses.

In Italian, “Duomo” is the name for a city's principal cathedral, so Piazza del Duomo literally means the square of the cathedral. Its present spaciousness appeared after the city council demolished the development surrounding the old church and laid out streets around the new building. The corner by Via dell'Oriuolo retained its old name—Canto dei Bischeri, the Bischeri Corner. The family's houses are no longer here, but the site of their unsuccessful deal remains in the city's speech and on the map.