The doors set into this gate are made of wood, and they have hung here since the fourteenth century, iron fittings and all. Stand underneath for a moment and look up at the holes in the vault, through which the defenders could drop whatever they happened to have on hand.
The gate belongs to the last wall that Florence built around itself. The city grew so fast in the fourteenth century that the previous ring became too small, and this wall was laid far enough out to take in the districts on the other side, so that from then on the wool washers and the dyers fell within it.
Behind here began the road to Pisa and the sea, the route by which the wool arrived that kept the city running. The wall itself mostly vanished in the nineteenth century, the gates stayed, and this is the best preserved of them all.
We head back into , toward the city, as far as the middle of the street.
Sources. Story: Comune di Firenze (Porta San Frediano, fourteenth-century walls); Treccani (walls of Florence, the fourteenth-century ring) Photos: Porta San Frediano, via Wikimedia Commons, photo Sailko, CC BY 2.5; Valerio Spada, view of Florence (ca. 1650), Rijksmuseum, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
