Oltrarno

[1] In November 2011, the urban restoration office of the Municipality of Florence set up a project,[2] not yet put into practice, to turn the former Gasometer - just a few hundred feet from the Oltrarno - into a major private health and beauty spa and restaurant centre, a magnet for the whole city and for tourists.

Formerly the study of the sculptor Emilio Santarelli,[4] in 1923, the Nidiaci was turned into an area for the children of San Frediano and later became the "symbol of social Catholicism in Florence",[5] attended by the pupils and friends of Giorgio La Pira, Fioretta Mazzei and father Danilo Cubattoli ("don Cuba").

The building and a large part of the garden were sold off at an auction to a real estate company[6] which raised a wooden wall to close the inhabitants out, causing demonstrations in the neighbourhood.

[10] The promoters claimed the project was aimed at freeing the surface of the square from cars, but residents saw it as an attempt to drive them out, accompanied as it was by the simultaneous selling off and closure of local health units in Oltrarno,[11] and as a threat to the architectural and hydrogeological stability of monuments of primary importance.

This led to the birth of the "NoScav" ("No Digging") movement, with its typical banners, hung by residents from their windows, depicting a stylized Carmine church and recalling the "NoTav" struggle against a high speed train system elsewhere.