The Wine Doors

How many times we stroll through the streets of a city and we don't notice the things that can hide an interesting story? A lot! And an example can be the small "wine doors" that is possible to see on the sides of the big Renaissance palaces or sometimes close to the main gates. They are tiny "arch"- shaped windows resembling the typical doors and portals of the ancient palazzos.

In Florence we could discover circa 145 doors just in the city center. Some of them are very good preserved, they still have their wooden doors, some instead have been walled. You know that Florence has a big wine tradition. The most important families, some of them are still alive, cultivated in the past huge areas of vineyards outside of the city wall. Usually the wine production was mainly carried out for private use by these old aristocratic families who usually had wine in excess sold it to the general public. The sale was requested by the Signoria and the wine was exclusively sold through these little windows.

So the Florentine at a certain time of the day could simply knock on the small doors and buy the so called "fiasco" of wine, a typical Italian style of bottle, usually with a round body and bottom, partially or completely covered with a close-fitting straw basket. You can find a lot of these beautiful small wine doors in Florence, some of them have still the opening and closing times, like the one located in Via delle Belle Donne at the corner with Via della Spada or the one in Via del Giglio belonging to the Bartolini Salimbeni family where you can still read "Open from November 1st until all of April from 10 a.m. to e 3 p.m. and at night from 5 till 9 p.m. From May 1st through all of October from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. and from 7 until 10 p.m".