The Streets You Miss

Traffic from Pisa and the port of Livorno entered Florence by this street. The borgo began as a doorway: a long run of workshops where the Oltrarno artisans once kept their shops, the quarter where the Florentine dialect ran widest. Vasco Pratolini dedicated a book to it, Le ragazze di San Frediano.

A church and convent of San Frediano stood here and at Piazza del Carmine before the tenth century. In 1783 Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo suppressed them, and the name moved to the church on the river, San Frediano in Cestello.

Between the Arno and the borgo lived the Romite di Ponte, nuns with a convent and gardens, from 1534 to 1749. Their house became a tobacco works in 1845, then a barracks, then apartments in 1895. Their church became a sculptor's studio: Pasquale Romanelli worked in it from 1851 to 1887, and his descendants keep the atelier there still.

In 1946, in a bar on this street, the Rondinella football club was founded, the neighborhood's answer to Fiorentina.

The frames are from the street cameras' April 2024 pass. The first sample letter I wrote for The Streets You Miss came from this street.

If a street has been waiting for you, I go back and write what is there now: a letter from the place you miss, one page, $20 by card. Write to me: [email protected]

Frames: three views of the borgo, April 2024.