Florence and Its Great Love Stories of the Past

Dante, Beatrice and other loves that shaped Florentine history.

1. DANTE AND BEATRICE: TWO DISTANT SOCIAL CLASSES

The story of Dante and Beatrice Portinari is undoubtedly one of the most famous love stories in Italian and Florentine culture. Dante first saw Beatrice when he was nine years old, and then encountered her again nine years later, at the age of eighteen, falling completely under her spell—a true love at first sight. A romantic 19th-century reinterpretation tells that the two met at a well inside Palazzo Spini Feroni, today home to the Ferragamo Museum…

This meeting, however, could have no future: their social classes were utterly incompatible for the time. In a tower-filled, walled Florence marked by fierce family rivalries, Dante was a political figure and an intellectual actively involved in the city’s public life. Yet he was still an Alighieri—no match for a Portinari. Beatrice was the daughter of Folco Portinari, Prior of Florence, a banker and a man of vast wealth, still remembered today for his role in Florentine history thanks to his charitable donations, made possible through Monna Tessa, Beatrice’s nurse, who interceded for the construction of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The Portinari family would become a cornerstone of Florentine patronage; suffice it to recall the work of Tommaso Portinari, exchange agent for the Medici in Bruges, who brought the celebrated Portinari Altarpiece to Florence, now displayed in the Uffizi Galleries.

Marriage between Dante and Beatrice was unthinkable. Beatrice, in fact, married into the Bardi family, which had an important chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce, in the transept—an unmistakable sign of prestige. The Bardi and the Portinari were among the great entrepreneurs of the time, in a Florence witnessing the rise of banking and economic success. Dante, for his part, married Gemma Donati, also in a socially advantageous union. In short, an impossible love that was never fulfilled, yet one that Dante masterfully sublimated. It lived on in the poet’s mind, elevated to such a degree that Beatrice became a donna angelicata, guiding him through Paradise. An ethereal figure of celestial beauty—“so gentle and so honest she appears”—repeatedly portrayed as a heavenly being.

With thanks to art historian Lucia Montuschi for her collaboration on the content.

2. COSIMO AND ELEONORA: LOVE AND POWER

The story of Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora of Toledo is one of mutual love. Cosimo was a central figure of the Medici family: after the Republic, he rose to power as the first Duke and later the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. Eleonora of Toledo was no less remarkable—daughter of Don Pedro, Viceroy of Naples. She met Cosimo in Naples, and he wasted no time in asking for her hand.

Although she was of aristocratic blood and he lacked royal lineage, the strength of the Medici family and their powerful alliances persuaded the great families of Europe to support this unusual union. When Eleonora arrived in Florence, she was welcomed by Maria Salviati at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, then the family residence. Beautiful as it was, Eleonora felt it did not befit the new Duchy of Tuscany, and so she encouraged her husband to seek a more appropriate residence: Palazzo della Signoria. Cosimo entrusted its renovation to the faithful Giorgio Vasari, and thus the newlyweds moved into the new Ducal Palace, where Eleonora had her own apartments. In this sense, Eleonora can be considered Florence’s first true “first lady.”

Educated from birth for her role, Eleonora was deeply involved in governance: she had private listening rooms where she advised her husband after his meetings, dined at his table, rode horseback, and educated her daughters in the same way as her sons—a decidedly progressive mindset.

However, Eleonora disliked the medieval character of Palazzo della Signoria and identified Palazzo Pitti, across the Arno, as a more suitable residence for the family. Acting independently, she purchased it with her own dowry, becoming the owner of Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens. The move of the ducal family to the “new” palace led to the building in Piazza della Signoria being called the “old” palace, Palazzo Vecchio. Cosimo then once again summoned Vasari, commissioning him to build a corridor linking Palazzo Vecchio to Palazzo Pitti—the Vasari Corridor.

Cosimo and Eleonora had eleven children. She died in 1562, at only forty years of age, from tuberculosis. A curiosity: the 16th-century funeral garments of Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora of Toledo are displayed today in the Museum of Fashion and Costume at Palazzo Pitti.

With thanks to art historian Lucia Montuschi for her collaboration on the content.

3. FRANCESCO I DE’ MEDICI AND BIANCA CAPPELLO: A SCANDALOUS LOVE

In 1570, Francis I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, married to Joanna of Austria, daughter of Ferdinand I of Habsburg, met Bianca Cappello, a charming Venetian noblewoman who soon became the center of his life. Their relationship, which began in secret and later became public, caused scandal, as Bianca was a married woman and was considered a “woman of low birth,” and her union with Francesco raised doubts about mysterious power games.

In 1578, Giovanna died suddenly, while Bianca's husband had been mysteriously murdered a few years earlier. Just one year later, Francesco officially married Bianca, elevating her to the rank of Grand Duchess. Despite their marriage, their love was always the subject of gossip and suspicion until their deaths in 1587 at the villa in Poggio a Caiano, just a few hours apart.

Visit all the symbolic places throughthe itinerary: In the Footsteps of Francesco I' de Medici and Bianca Cappello.