Loggia dei Lanzi Thermography 2025 - Florence, Italy
| General Attributes |
DOI| 10.34946/D66S3Q | |
| Project Name | Loggia dei Lanzi Thermography 2025 - Florence |
| Country | Italy |
| Status | Upcoming |
| Citation |
| Scott McAvoy, George Bent, Maurizio Seracini, Falko Kuester, Florence As It Was, Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3), Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) 2025: Loggia dei Lanzi Thermography 2025 - Florence - Thermography, LiDAR - Terrestrial. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D66S3Q |
| Download |
| Spatial Data | Coming Soon |
| Data Type |
Size |
Device Name |
Device Type |
| Thermography | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| LiDAR - Terrestrial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Background |
| Site Description | Whereas written records of fourteenth-century artistic projects are often scarce, Florentine institutions were quite careful when it came to documenting the progress of architectural projects in the city. The selection of masters, financial supervisors, and specialists in charge of a building’s specific features were of great importance to patrons and institutional leaders charged with fiduciary responsibilities. The aggregation of payments to named individuals, along with reprimands and pecuniary threats to laborers perceived to be less than faithful to their duties, can paint a vivid picture of a structure’s building history. As Carl Frey demonstrated masterfully in 1885, such is the case with the evidence surrounding the construction of the Loggia dei Lanzi, the large public meeting area that faces the Palazzo Vecchio from the south flank of the Piazza della Signoria, located in the civic heart of Florence.
The loggia form was a common feature of public life in the Medieval city. Used primarily as an architectural framing device for performative celebrations but also employed as a feature of markets and food centers, the open design relied on the simple combination of piers, bases, and vaulted ceilings while omitting solid wall surfaces. As a built covering, the loggia served as a protected space in which users could shield themselves from the elements – rain, snow, sleet, and sunshine – all year round. The permeable structure encouraged free movement into and through the space, and benches were often placed inside and outside the canopied loggia to foster conversations both formal and informal. Loggias could come in any size or shape, and it was not unusual for particularly affluent Florentine families to construct such an architectural space either in or opposite their urban residences as a kind of public waiting room, so that clients – both commercial and social – could congregate there, for all to see, in the hopes of meeting with their patron.
Florentine officials recognized the importance of these functional aspects when the city’s priors formally moved to commission the construction of the large loggia on January 14, 1374 (1373 o.s.). Citing the need for a space large enough to hold official ceremonies, the move to purchase properties on the Piazza della Signoria directly across from the Palazzo Vecchio – the physical center of the Republican government – was overtly motivated by a desire to enhance the prestige of the commune as an enormous stage upon which to perform acts of authority, both local and international. Buildings along the southern edge of the piazza were purchased from their owners and then demolished, creating an open space that abutted the city’s Mint, located just to the south of the building site, thus connecting an important administrative office to the Palazzo Vecchio via the intended loggia.
Perhaps predictably, the desires of the priors outpaced their means as the proclamation to build the loggia was not acted upon for three full years. Only in 1377, after securing the participation (and oversight) of the supervisors then employed by the nearly completed cathedral of S. Maria del Fiore, was a construction team appointed, salaried, and charged with specific building and decorative tasks. Not surprisingly, the final designs of the piers and vaults of the Loggia dei Lanzi referred directly to those that had just been erected in the Duomo during its construction in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Among those involved in the architectural and artistic project were Simone Talenti and Benci di Cione, experienced and talented specialists in the arts of sculpture and building. Neither of them appears to have been in any hurry to complete the work, as the rather basic triple arched loggia (and the sculptural reliefs embedded in it) took five full years to complete. It was inaugurated as a usable space by the priors on 01 November 1382 and then put into service only four days later when diplomats from Ravenna were officially received there.
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| Project Description | 161 thermal images were captured in 4 stations with high resolution FLIR 1020 camera during optimal conditions during December 2025, revealing detail beneath the plaster layer. Thermography was aligned using three terrestrial LiDAR provided by the Florence As it Was project, performed in April of the same year.This effort is described in the field report: Mcavoy, S. P, Agarwal, A., Klingspon, J., Rissolo, D., & Kuester, F. (2026). Florence Thermography and XR, Dec 1st - Jan 5th 2025 Florence, Italy. UC San Diego: Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at Calit2. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4tx7832v | |
| UNESCO World Heritage Site | Historic Centre of Florence |
| Collection Date | 2025-04-01 to 2026-12-12 |
| Publication Date | 2025-05-20 |
| License Type | CC BY-NC |
| Model Information |
| Reuse Score | B - High-Quality Model without Georeferencing |
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