_Piazza de’ Giudicci. No. 1._
In 1180 Schiatta degl’Uberti, whose family had houses and towers near
the present Piazza de’ Giudicci, sold one fourth part, _pro indiviso_,
of the castle to one of the Altafronte family. The sons of Lottieri
d’Altafronte, who seemed to have been in perpetual need of money,
borrowed from various people, and were at last obliged to sell it, as
appears by an act of 1304, when Cecchino Bardi became “master of a
habitation in the parish of S. Piero Scheraggio, called the castle of
Altafronte, surrounded on all sides by streets.”
In 1333, according to Gaddi, the castle was devastated and ruined,
together with many other houses, by the terrible flood which carried
away the old statue of Mars near the Ponte Vecchio. It must have
been at once restored, as fifteen years later a certain Bencivieni
Buonsostegni, to whom it then belonged, made a will forbidding his
descendants to alienate it; in case they did so it was to go to the
Commune. His sons having to pay their sister’s dower petitioned for
leave to sell, which was granted. The Commune itself may have been the
purchaser, as there is a petition from the _Operai_, or clerks of the
works, of the Duomo, who were obliged to buy houses and lands in order
to continue the building of Sta. Maria del Fiore, complaining that the
4,500 florins promised to them, had been spent in rebuilding the walls
of the castle of Altafronte, three towers and the Porta d’Arno.[11]
It then passed into the possession of the Castellani family, one of
whom left the castle, together with a farm at Rome, to the hospital
of Sta. Maria at Ripoli. But either the family bought it back or the
testator could only leave a part of the great building, as when Matteo
Castellani died, and was buried with the greatest pomp in Sta. Croce
in 1429, “his son Francesco was publicly knighted by the side of his
father’s bier; his mourning habiliments were torn off in the church
and, habited as a cavalier, the other knights of the order accompanied
him most honourably to his palace.” Ten years later Demetrio Paleologo,
Despot of the Morea, took up his abode there when he accompanied his
brother the Emperor to the Council of Florence.
In 1558 the Grand Duke Cosimo I. bought the castle of Altafronte from
the Castellani, and fourteen years later, under the reign of Francesco
I., it became the residence of the Judges of the Ruota, and the shops
near by were turned into offices for the notaries. In 1858 many
wretched houses, with the arms of the judges and the notaries on their
façades, which had sprung up in the Piazza de’ Castellani, were swept
away, and two years later the wall of the Lung’Arno della Borsa was
built.
Opposite to the Castello d’Altafronte, which is now part of the
National Library, is a marble slab in the parapet wall of the Arno with
an inscription which often arouses the curiosity of the passers-by.