WHAT IS THE Giubbe Rosse ?
The history of the famous café of Florence (Italy) from its' foundation until the present day.
The destruction of Piazza del Mercato Vecchio (Old Market Square), which was renamed Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II, and never was very popular. It is known today as Piazza della Repubblica, and is the location of the "Giubbe Rosse".
At the end of the l9th century the city administration of Florence decided to raze the old neighborhood of Mercato Vecchio to the ground, in favour of a new square dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II. "Non fu giammai così nobil giardino/ come a quel tempo egli è Mercato Vecchio / che l'occhio e il gusto pasce al fiorentino", sang the poet Antonio Pucci in the fourteenth century, "Mercato Vecchio nel mondo è alimento./ A ogni altra piazza il prego serra".
It could not be denied, that the area had decayed from its' original medieval splendour. In l88l the journalist Jarro published a book entitled "Firenze sotteranea", in which he denounced the centre of town as a hotbed of crime and prostitution. Although many events in the book probably were exaggerated or distorted on purpose, the clamour it caused nonetheless convinced all decent citizens of the need to clean up all this filth.
"Telemaco, are you crying because all this trash is being torn down?" an engineer jokingly asked Telemaco Signorini, who went on painting the old alleys without appearing to be affected by their ongoing demolition. "No, I am crying because of all the trash that's being put up", the painter responded. And in fact artists, poets and men of culture never forgave the city for having destroyed forever historical and artistic monuments of incomparable value, which easily could have been restored, such as towers, churches, buildings, alleys and little squares and are known today only from paintings by the "Macchiaoli and the old photos by Brogi and Alinari.
But what pleased everyone even less was the pretentious Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II, with its' enormous triumphal arch, inaugurated in l895.
In their poetry Florentian poets described the new square in quite a different way from Pucci: "Piazza brutta, piazza ruffiana/ piazza ignobile di provincia", wrote Papini, "Piazza ov'è tutto intonato/ alla stessa goffagine, ove tutto/ è si armonicamente astruso e brutto, / mal concepito e peggio fabbricato", added the humorist Vamba.
Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele is the least esthetic square in the world today. Completely quadrangular, and enclosed on three sides by mediocre buildings, divided by the most vulgar porticoes the human architectural mind could ever devise, with in the middle of the square a triumphant monument of the great king on a horse.
And as if that weren't enough, an overblown group of statues made out of plaster and alabaster, consisting of a lady surrounded by angels with long trumpets was added above the central arch of the arcades, and a gigantic tablet advising the unwary citizen or out of towner, that this was the old centre of town, which had been saved from centuries of squalor and given a new life."
"This would have been enough to have made a Futurist even out of St. Anthony."
These words of Alberto Viviani suffice to make us understand why the Florentian avant-garde decided to open their "office" right on Piazza Vittorio in the now mythical rooms of the café "Giubbe Rosse".
The café was the first to open on the new square, exactly at the location, where, when still known as Mercato Vecchio, there had been a wine bar. * It was founded by 2 Germans, the Reininghaus Brothers, who quickly turned it into the meeting point of the large German community in Florence.
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