| 14. Florence Capital of Italy: the Town Center is "Given New Life" |
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 In 1859 the Lorreines left Florence for good. After the second
War of Independence and after Tuscany joined the Savoy
Reign of Unified Italy, Florence is the Capital of Italy for 5
years (1865-70).
The historical city centre underwent intensive
urban renovation (which the Middle classes deemed necessary for
prestige, but also for speculation, disguised beneath a
humanistic and historical formula) which completely destroyed the
Old Market, together with its Jewish quarter, near to the present
day Piazza della Repubblica rebuilt on this site, (twice the
original size) and marks the destruction of the organic
connection of a thousand years of urbanistic stratification,
substituted with an anonymous geometrical layout of buildings,
amongst which some monuments have been left intact, emerging with
no connection to the buildings around them.
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