Buildings

S. Remigio a

San Remigio, also known as San Romeo, was established as a spedale to accommodate pilgrims on their way to Rome. In addition to lodging, San Remigio was equipped with an oratory that attended to the pilgrims' spiritual needs.

A three-aisled Romanesque church was extant at the turn of the eleventh century and was rebuilt in the Gothic style in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by which time it had become a parish church. Decoration, including narrative wall frescoes, furnishings, and tombs continued to be added into the early fifteenth century.

The church was dramatically altered after 1568 in response to ducal demands to adhere to Counter-Reformation ideals of openness and transparency, which led to the removal of the church tramezzo (rood screen). The interior was changed again in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most recent renovations removed much of the baroque and neoclassical installations in an attempt to return the interior to its medieval character.

When Stefano Rosselli described the parish church in the 1650s, he lamented that of the oldest churches in Florence, San Remigio had the least amount of documentation. He based his description on the account of M. Carlo Carleschi da Monterchi, the prior at the time, who reported that a French rest house (the spedale della Nazione Franzese) stood on the site of the church with its dedication to St Remigius (Remy or Rémi in French), one of the titular saints of France (d. 3 January 533). Remigius served as the Bishop of Reims, France, and is also known as the "Apostle of the Franks"for his role in the Christianization of France.

Rosselli also recounts that the church had the nickname "Romei" because the French pilgrims who stopped there were on their way to or from Rome. Thus S. Remigio also came to be known as S. Romeo. As the city grew and was enclosed by its second ring of walls in the 1170s, the hospital became a parochial church. The antiquarian noted that the oldest notice he could find was dated 1227 in a Bagnesi family diary (ricordanza), then in the possession of Senator Giuliano Bagnesi, the last man in the family line. It indicated that the family had jus patronatus and appointed its rectors. Rosselli then quoted a 1265 Carta di elezione della Chiesa di S. Romeo, in which M. Rainerio de Bagno was responsible for the installation of Tebalduccio di Tebaldo as rector. Rosselli surmises that the present church was built around 1350 because the arch separating the first and second bays of the nave was sponsored by the Pepi family, whose arms decorated the vault and one of its supporting piers. A tomb marker with the following inscription indicated that the family tomb was at the foot of the pier: S. Piero del Bene Pepi et suorum. Piero del Bene Pepi lived around the middle of the fourteenth century and served in the Signoria in 1350.

Most of the tombs are lost, though some markers remain in the church (including medieval monuments covered over in later modernizations), while others have been moved to the San Remigio cloister. Whether other markers have been moved to storage at San Marco or sold on the art market remains to be discovered.