Department Facilities and locationsLocationsPalazzo Vegni

Palazzo Vegni

Via San Niccolò, 93 – Tel. 055 2755300

It houses the Postgraduate School of Architectural and Landscape Heritage, the ABITA (Mediterranean Living) and TESIS (Systems and Technologies for Health and Social Care Facilities) Research Centres, and staff offices.

It is also home to the FAL (Florence Accessibility Lab), GRID (Design in the Genesis and Transmission of Built Models), MCT_FI (New Museum of the City and Territory), TxP_R (Technology for the Project_Research Unit) and PPcP (Landscape, Cultural Heritage, Design) research units.

The building takes its name from one of its last owners, the engineer Angelo Vegni, an entrepreneur and one of the founders of Officine Galileo, who in 1860 raised the height of the building and unified the façade, removing the medieval battlements whilst preserving the beautiful late 16th-century stone portal at its centre.

The first structure, however, dates back to 1292 when Gherardino Gianni, known as Gherardino Juniore – a leading figure in Florentine economic policy during the 13th century – joined together three terraced houses belonging to his family, typical of Florentine small-scale residential architecture, and also built a solid tower-house crowned with Guelph battlements, which formed the main core of the future Palazzo Gianni. Renovations in the following centuries altered its structure and appearance, but it was above all the refurbishment of the façade commissioned by Angelo Vegni – which saw the battlements removed – that contributed to erasing the legacy of a glorious medieval and republican past.

In 1976, ten years after the tragic flood and in the midst of a housing crisis, the building was occupied by a number of homeless families, who carried out extensive renovation work to convert it into flats. In April 1980, the City of Florence purchased the property and ordered its clearance due to the well-documented poor sanitary conditions and the risk of collapse. By the end of the 1980s, conservation work and the necessary refurbishments had restored it to its current state of use, designating it for the Faculty of Architecture.