Palazzo
dell'Arcone

There is a building in Florence designed not to be merely inhabited but to be seen. Architect Vincenzo Micheli completed the Palazzo dell'Arcone in 1895 as what he himself called a "monumental urban sign" — a scenographic statement meant to anchor and dramatize the most consequential new public space in 19th-century Florence. The arch that gives the building its name — a great Romanesque triumphal arch spanning Via degli Strozzi — was carved with an inscription visible across the entire piazza:

L'ANTICO CENTRO DELLA CITTÀ DA SECOLARE SQUALLORE A VITA NUOVA RESTITUITO
"The ancient center of the city, restored from age-old squalor to new life."

The inscription tells the building's story and Florence's: this piazza was built on the exact site of the forum of Roman Florentia, the colony established by Julius Caesar's veterans around 59 BCE. The intersection of the ancient city's two primary roads — the cardo and the decumanus — crossed here. The Colonna dell'Abbondanza at the center of the piazza marks that precise point. To stand on Piazza della Repubblica is to stand at the geometric center of a city that has been continuously inhabited for over two thousand years.

On top of the Roman forum grew the medieval Mercato Vecchio — Florence's densest, most layered commercial heart, the Jewish ghetto, tower-houses, guild halls built over Roman foundations. The urban renewal campaign of 1885–1895 swept it all away and replaced it with this palazzo and its surrounding arcades. The inscription is still argued about. Florence has been debating what it lost and what it gained ever since.

Your apartment is on the top floor. The windows look directly over the piazza — the Column of Abundance, the arcade of historic cafes, the city moving below. Walk through the arch and you emerge onto Via degli Strozzi, with Palazzo Strozzi — the greatest Renaissance palazzo in Florence, today its premier venue for international art exhibitions — directly in front of you. The Hotel Savoy faces the piazza from the east. Florence's luxury shopping street, Via Tornabuoni — Ferragamo, Hermès, Gucci — is five minutes west. Every important monument in the city is on foot from your door.

The apartment was completed at the beginning of 2026 — entirely new, without compromise. Every wall is finished in hand-applied Venetian plaster. The floors are Carrara marble in the bathrooms and wide-plank walnut throughout the living spaces. Each of the three bathrooms is finished in Bisazza tile — one of them in their signature mosaic — the Italian brand that has dressed the world's finest interiors for over a century. The kitchen is a Gullo — hand-built in Florence, the professional kitchen that serious cooks dream about and only a few homes in Italy actually have.

The ceilings rise to double height. In a Florentine apartment, this is essentially unheard of — it creates a scale of light and air that belongs to a different century. The floor plan is open and generous in a way that is decidedly un-Italian, a deliberate choice to let the space breathe. American-quality mattresses on every bed. A washer and dryer. Every convenience, no compromises.

There are four places to sleep: two bedrooms with king beds, a third with a single, and a loft with a fourth king that doubles — when afternoon calls for it — as a media room, a game room, a quiet study, or a den for children. Three full bathrooms serve the household. A small private patio opens off the main level.

Florence is a city that rewards being inside it rather than passing through it. This is a home from which to be inside it entirely.