At the eastern corner of the Piazza della Signoria--that great square
over which almost all the history of Florence may be said to have
passed--rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its great projecting parapets
and its soaring tower: the old Palace of the Signoria, originally the
Palace of the Priors, and therefore of the People. It is often stated
that the square battlements of the Palace itself represent the Guelfs,
while the forked battlements of the tower are in some mysterious way
connected with the Ghibellines, who can hardly be said to have still
existed as a real party in the city when they were built; there is, it
appears, absolutely no historical foundation for this legend. The
Palace was commenced by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1298, when, in
consequence of the hostility between the magnates and the people, it
was thought that the Priors were not sufficiently secure in the Palace
of the Cerchi; and it may be taken to represent the whole course of
Florentine history, from this government of the Secondo Popolo,
through Savonarola's Republic and the Medicean despotism, down to the
unification of Italy. Its design and essentials, however, are
Arnolfo's and the people's, though many later architects, besides
Vasari, have had their share in the completion of the present
building. Arnolfo founded the great tower of the Priors upon an older
tower of a family of magnates, the Foraboschi, and it was also known
as the Torre della Vacca. When, in those fierce democratic days, its
great bell rang to summon a Parliament in the Piazza, or to call the
companies of the city to arms, it was popularly said that "the cow"
was lowing. The upper part of the tower belongs to the fifteenth
century. Stupendous though the Palazzo is, it would have been of
vaster proportions but for the prohibition given to Arnolfo to raise
the house of the Republic where the dwellings of the Uberti had once
stood--_ribelli di Firenze e Ghibellini_. Not even the heroism of
Farinata could make this stern people less "fierce against my kindred
in all its laws," as that great Ghibelline puts it to Dante in the
_Inferno_.