foundation of the final circuit of the city walls having been
finished that same year by the community of Florence, the
commencement of which was referred to above, and also the gate
towers, and the work being well forward, he began the palace of the
Signori, making it similar in design to that which his father Lapo
had erected for the counts of Poppi. But he was unable to realise the
grand and magnificent conception which he had formed in that
perfection which his art and judgment required, because a piazza had
been made by the dismantling and throwing down of the houses of the
Uberti, rebels against the Florentine people and Ghibellines, and the
blind prejudice of certain persons prevailed against all the
arguments brought forward by Arnolfo to such an extent that he could
not even obtain permission to make the palace square, because the
rulers of the city were most unwilling to allow the building to have
its foundations in the land of the Uberti, and they would rather
suffer the destruction of the south nave of S. Piero Scheraggio than
give him free scope in the space designated. They were also desirous
that he should include and adapt to the palace the tower of the
Fieraboschi, called the Torre della Vacca (Cow Tower), 50 braccia in
height, in which the great bell was hung, together with some houses
bought by the commune for such a building. For these reasons it is no
marvel if the foundations of the palace are awry and out of the
square, as, in order to get the tower in the middle and to make it
stronger, he was obliged to surround it with the walls of the palace.
These were found to be in excellent condition in the year 1561 by
Giorgio Vasari, painter and architect, when he restored the palace in
the time of Duke Cosimo, Thus, as Arnolfo filled the tower with good
materials, it was easy for other masters to erect upon it the lofty
campanile which we see to-day, since he himself finished no more than
the palace in the space of two years. It was in later years that the
building received those improvements to which it owes its present
grandeur and majesty.

After all these things, and many others not less useful than
beautiful, Arnolfo died at the age of seventy, in the year 1300,
about the time when Giovanni Villani began to write the general
history of his times. And since he left S. Maria del Fiore not only
with its foundations laid, but saw three principal apses under the
cupola vaulted in, to his great praise,