Valdigrieve

Description

In the sixteenth canto of Paradiso, Cacciaguida responds to his great-grandson's question about the families that once inhabited the Florence of San Giovanni. Among the illustrious people of the ancient Florentine sheepfold, the great-great-grandfather names the Buondelmonti, whom the verse explicitly places in Valdigrieve. The quarter is thus evoked as one of the spaces of ancient Florence still recognizable in the city of Dante's time, alongside the other houses mentioned in the same speech. The introduction to canto XVI emphasizes how these verses give the reader a historical and everyday reality, comparable to that of fourteenth-century Florence, where the houses of the last urban sesto resemble those inhabited by the readers.