Located in Via Pietrapiana in Florence, overlooking Via Martiri del Popolo, the Farmacia del Canto delle Rondini is part of the city's historic buildings which preserve almost all the period furniture. Founded in the mid-1300s, it was restored in neo-Gothic style in 1919, reviving the ancient atmospheres of the Arte dei Speziali in modern Florence.
Farmacia del Canto delle Rondini History
The foundation of the Farmacia del Canto delle Rondini of Florence probably dates back to the mid-fourteenth century and was originally housed in the corner between via Verdi and via Pietrapiana on the ground floor of Palazzo Uccellini, from whose coat of arms depicting three swallows on red field .
In 1919 the architect Adolfo Coppedè, commissioned by the industrialist Filippo Maria Contri, restructured the interiors according to the neo-gothic style, while respecting the original fourteenth-century character. A few years later, in 1936, as part of the rehabilitation project of the Santa Croce district, the pharmacy was moved to its current location in via Pietrapiana, but keeping the furniture, re-adapting the furniture to the new spaces.
According to tradition here was the spice shop of Matteo Palmieri, cultured humanist and politician of the fifteenth century, and still entering today there is a sort of funny historical paradox, with the pharmacist to welcome customers among architraves, shelves, panels decorated with fourteenth-century motifs, dark solid wood furniture, beaten irons, ceramic vases with engravings and a gothic tabernacle with the Madonna delle Rondini by Umberto Bartoli.
The sales counter is decorated with an oil panel depicting a patient who receives a blood transfusion. According to the tradition handed down here, it would be a memory of the first transfusion of blood ever occurred between human beings and that would have been completed in this pharmacy.
Today the pharmacy is managed by Dr. Danilo Bagetta where he mainly sells medicines for contemporary medicine.