_Via degl’Alfani._
[Illustration: DOORWAY OF PALAZZO GIUGNI.]
Bartolomeo Ammannati built this palace for the rich merchant Simone
da Firenzuola in 1577. He died soon afterwards, leaving a will
forbidding his sons, or their heirs, “to dare, or to presume, either
_inter vivos_, or by last will or testament for any reason whatever,
to sell, give away or alienate, the said house.” In case his sons had
no children the property was to go to the descendants of his brother
Carlo, and failing them, to those of his daughter Virginia, married to
Vincenzio Giugni. None of his sons had any children, so in 1640 the
palace came into the possession of his Giugni grandchildren. The Giugni
claimed descent from Junius Brutus, and were always Guelphs. The first
Prior of fifty they gave to Florence was Ugolino, in 1291, and his
descendant Bernardo, a man of great ability and consummate prudence,
was the chosen spokesman when there was a popular tumult. Messer
Galeotto Giugni, a staunch republican, was exiled, and together with
his son, murdered at Rome by emissaries of Cosimo I. Vincenzio Giugni,
husband of Virginia Firenzuola, became a Senator in 1600, a dignity
also conferred on his son Niccolò, who married Cassandra, the last of
the noble house of Bandini of Rome. The fine collection of ancient
statues belonging to her uncle, Cardinal Ottavio Bandini, was brought
to Florence and placed in the garden of the palace. Cinelli gives an
account of them, as well as of the pictures in the gallery, in his
_Bellezze della Città di Firenze_.
In 1830 the palace was sold to the Della Porta family, who still own
it, and in 1871 it was admirably restored by the architect De Fabris,
who scrupulously avoided adding to, or altering, the work of Ammannati.
The coat-of-arms of the Firenzuola, a tiger girt with a golden girdle
and holding a sickle in his right paw, is on the façade. In the
latter half of the last century Palazzo Giugni was much frequented by
English visitors to Florence, as Mr. Spence, a popular and well-known
personage, inhabited the second floor during the winter.