Arte della Lana

[1] At the height of the industry the Arte della Lana directly employed 30,000 workers and indirectly about a third of Florence's population, and produced 100,000 lengths of cloth annually.

The Arte della Lana saw all the processes from the raw baled wool through the final cloth, woven at numerous looms scattered in domiciles throughout the city.

The wool guild was also located in Florence, Italy and commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt the statue David The Arte della Lana exercised its patronage over the Opera del Duomo, entrusted to it directly by the Signoria in 1331.

Purchased in 1890 by the Municipality of Florence, it escaped the demolitions of the Renovation despite being deeply compromised, and was sold in 1903 to the Dante Alighieri Society for public readings as an illustration of the Divine Comedy.

This promoted a complex restoration and reconstruction of the property, now isolated following the rehabilitation of the Mercato Vecchio area (1885-1895), in order to transform the ancient Compiobbesi tower into an architecture adhering to the idea that one had then of fourteenth-century Florence.