Tourists snapping selfies on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence these days may be hard-pressed to say anything about the bridge other than that it’s “old”—appropriate, I suppose, given its name Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge). Yet as Theresa Flanigan’s meticulous study of the bridge’s origins in The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence reminds us, the extant Ponte Vecchio is “the oldest surviving bridge in Florence, the only functional medieval bridge along the entire course of the Arno River, and one of the few remaining medieval examples of the urbanized or inhabited bridge type in all of Europe” (1). An “inhabited bridge” is a bridge supporting houses and/or shops over the waterway it spans: one of the most famous was the medieval London Bridge (1209–1831). The “oldness” of the Ponte Vecchio thus has unimpeachable credentials; yet Flanigan’s study—the only such work in English devoted specifically to the bridge thus far—dissects both the complex process of its construction and the palimpsestic nature of the landmark that has survived to the present day. The Ponte Vecchio is therefore not only a work of analytical coherence, framing the vision and rationale of the civic officials who commissioned the original fourteenth-century bridge (most of which is still standing today), but also a work of analytical complexity, revealing the civic rifts that necessitated that unitary vision as well as the unravelings of time that have changed the bridge over the course of its nearly seven-hundred-year existence.

After a short introduction, chapter one uses the account of the bridge’s origin offered by Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani (d. 1348) to review various historical claims about bridge-building in Florence, and to establish a link between bridge construction and civic mythmaking. Villani, for example, saw the destruction of an earlier bridge in the floods of 1333 and the construction of the new bridge in the 1340s as manifesting a teleological narrative of increasing order, harmony, and prosperity—all part of Florence’s destiny as a new Rome (36–37).

Chapters two and three offer a detailed account of the clean-up efforts after the devastating floods of 1333, council debates about how to replace the earlier bridge on that site (1333–39), and arrangements made for the construction of the new bridge (1339–46). These rely on tax records and civic registers to demonstrate the day-to-day workings of the Florentine government in this period; they also offer a vivid impression of the involvement of civic elites in the republican government (often tracing the involvement of multiple individuals from a single family) and the central role of public landmarks such as bridges in violent disputes between Florence’s magnate families and its antimagnate government. In one coup attempt in 1340, for example, members of the Bardi, Frescobaldi, and other magnate families based in the Oltrarno took violent control of the city’s bridges, destroying wooden ones and killing those who attempted to cross; the government responded by not only putting down the uprising but also speeding up its plans for new, more robust stone bridges. Flanigan’s account of this episode is a fascinating microhistory of early-fourteenth-century civic struggle.

Following these two chiefly narrative chapters, chapters four through six offer three different analyses of how the rebuilt bridge (the structure we now know as the Ponte Vecchio) was designed to represent the late medieval republican government’s principles of order, harmony, and rationality. Chapter four discusses modo et forma, the “manner and form” of the bridge’s construction, from foundation and piers to arches and vaults. Chapter five links these to what Flanigan (following in the footsteps of scholars like Diana Norman and Marvin Trachtenberg) calls “the politics of urban design”, the principle common to fourteenth-century Italy that aesthetic beauty and rational geometry both create and reflect a well-ordered community. Finally, chapter six analyzes how the government regulated the establishment of shops and residences on the newly-built bridge to ensure that they too reflected “the honor and value of the people and commune of Florence” (117–18). All aspects of the new bridge, from its foundations to its ornaments and inhabitants, were therefore carefully chosen to create a particular image of the city and its commune: structurally sound, prosperous, and unified.

A last chapter then traces the fortunes of the Ponte Vecchio after 1495; while short and unnumbered (an epilogue rather than chapter seven), this chapter is crucial to Flanigan’s argument because it makes two important points. First, the “medieval” disorder and irregularity bemoaned by 18th- and 19th-century “modernizers” was actually the result of deregulation and privatization after the commune sold off its interest in the bridge in 1495. Second, the limitation of the bridge to practitioners of a single profession (goldsmiths and jewelers) and the architectural addition of the Vasari corridor—both in the sixteenth century—substantially changed the more broadly “civic” nature of the fourteenth-century bridge as originally designed. (The Vasari corridor is an elevated passageway designed by Giorgio Vasari and built into the urban fabric in the mid-16th century.) As Flanigan reminds us, “the Ponte Vecchio risks being considered a frozen-in-time historical artifact, but we must not forget the fascinating historical palimpsest that it is” (164).

The text is generously illustrated and accompanied by a number of useful tables tracing measurements as well as officials who played a part in the bridgeworks and owners of shops/practitioners of trades on the bridge in particular years. Furthermore, the last seventy-five pages (171–248) reproduce a range of textual accounts regarding the plans for, construction of, and life of the bridge; while some of these are reprinted from prior publications, others have been transcribed by the author and are printed here for the first time. It is a great contribution to the scholarly community to have them all in one place.

This is a rich, engrossing perspective into the world of late medieval Florence: while Florence is well-trod scholarly territory, Flanigan’s study demonstrates that new perspectives are always possible, and material case studies are especially worthwhile. Among the points of significance that jumped out to me were, first, the fact that despite modern art historians’ best attempts to identify one, the Ponte Vecchio was commissioned and built without the involvement of a star architect (84)—a salutary reminder that the cult of the genius artist/architect is largely a modern invention. Second, Flanigan’s careful documentation of the Ponte Vecchio as a mixed-economy neighborhood, where a huge variety of professionals including goldsmiths, butchers, lawyers, threadmakers, and secondhand clothes dealers all lived cheek-by-jowl (143), offers important documentation for the complex logistics of urban life and society in premodern Italy.

Making the same point on a broader scale, Flanigan’s book demonstrates the essential interweaving of spheres of life that are often studied in isolation: the history of elites and artisans, lay sociopolitical structures and the church, tax records, artistic commissions, and acts of pious charity. Her argument about citizens’ concern with order, harmony, and rationality seems especially (like the bridge) well-founded because it reaches into all these spheres. In fact, it echoes much recent work on late medieval Italian communes in general and Florence in particular, a synchronicity between art history and other kinds of history that Flanigan could actually have made more explicit. I was strongly reminded of the work of Katherine Jansen (Peace and Penance, 2018, on Florence) and James Palmer (The Virtues of Economy, 2019, on Rome), not to mention the new multivolume series Ordine, calcolo e ‘ragione’ nell’Italia tardo medievale, the first volume of which has just been published in 2025, edited by Elena Maccioni and Sergio Tognetti.

At the same time, Flanigan’s work is not just for specialists. With dozens of pictures, the book is a vivid read, and I was reminded of numerous modern parallels as I read along. As early as the early fourteenth century, for example, Giovanni Villani noted that human mismanagement of the natural environment created or worsened the risks of catastrophic flooding (40), a problem we continue to confront today. Flanigan’s comment that large civic projects like bridge-building have the double benefit of both creating infrastructure and employing many worthy citizens who might otherwise go hungry had a strong ring of FDR’s New Deal and the WPA (65). And finally, after the new bridge had been built and regulated to the commune’s great satisfaction, it wasn’t “medieval disorder” but privatization and deregulation that led to the abandonment of the original vision of the bridge as a common good for a bonum comune. Perhaps modern policy wonks would do well to pay closer attention to history. In the meantime, anyone with an interest in architectural or art history, premodern construction techniques, medieval Italian cities, and/or Florence will enjoy this book.