Santa Maria Novella Home Florence

The ancient street owes its name to the former hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, founded in 1313 by Cione di Lapo Pollini, a craftsman who became consul of the Wool Guild, on the corner with the current Via degli Orti Oricellari. The structure was in fact placed under the protection of the homonymous hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, which had a three-rung staircase surmounted by a cross as its emblem. This coat of arms can still be seen along Via della Scala, walled up on the wall of the former hospital, which today houses the Gian Paolo Meucci Penal Institute for Minors. the hospital church, the former San Martino, housed the fresco of the Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli, now in the Uffizi deposits.

The street numbering starts from the end towards Piazza Santa Maria Novella. At the corner with the square a large tabernacle holds a copy of a fourteenth-century fresco of Madonna tra santi by Antonio del Chierico, detached and placed in the deposits of the superintendency for conservation reasons.

At number 6, the Dal Borgo palace bears traces of graffiti frescoes on the facade and a large bust of Cosimo I on the portal.

At the corner with Via del Porcelain there was another ancient hospital called the Barelloni, of which only the church remains today, renovated as an oratory in 1656, dedicated to Saints Jacopo and Filippo and recognizable by the bas-relief decorating the façade.

The right side of the street is largely occupied by the back of the convent of Santa Maria Novella, in which the perfume-pharmaceutical workshop of Santa Maria Novella was created, at number 16, continuously active since the seventeenth century, and the old headquarters of the Barracks of the Official pupils school of the Carabinieri, in the former monastery of the Santissima Concezione, today waiting to be used as an extension of the museum of Santa Maria Novella.

After passing via Santa Caterina da Siena, in a house on the right a plaque in Latin and a bust mark the house of Blessed Ippolito Galantini (number 30).


The entrance to the Corsini garden
At number 85 is the Palazzo Venturi-Ginori, formerly belonging to the Rucellai and annexed to the Orti Oricellari.

At 62, on the other hand, you can see the facade of the deconsecrated church of San Jacopo di Ripoli with the valuable glazed terracotta lunette depicting the Madonna with Child and Saints Jacopo and Domenico by Giovanni della Robbia (1522). After the late nineteenth-century suppression of the adjoining convent, the Morandi barracks were placed there.

In the final part of the street, a high wall on the left delimits the Corsini Garden, with a beautiful portal with a gate. The passage was not created to be admired from the outside, but from the inside, as shown by the two dog statues on the pillars, facing the garden and the villa.