This year marks the 70th anniversary of Florence’s scrappy little neighborhood that could: Isolotto. Some snobby Florentines still think of it as the “Bronx of Florence”, but these days, especially with the new Starbucks moving in, this firmly middle-class, laidback district is more like Staten Island or Queens.
“Unfortunately, in the popular imagination, Isolotto is still what it was in the 1970s and ‘80s: an objectively complicated neighborhood,” says communications consultant and Polimoda vice-president Alessandro Sorani, who has lived here all his life. “Back then, the original nucleus found itself surrounded by new arrivals. They were hard years in which the neighborhood paid a price for conflicts that arose around integration.”
The leafy, pedestrian-friendly Isolotto Vecchio with its charming flower-named streets has suffered from this conflation with “Isolotto Nuovo” ever since. Some locals would keep it that way. “We don’t want it to become gentrified!” says U.S.-born freelance journalist Christie Barakat. “Florentines snub the area because it’s generally working class, but it’s a great place to live. People can be themselves and it’s unpretentious.”
Isolotto’s origins are more highbrow than its reputation, tied to no less than Leonardo da Vinci, who helped reclaim the floodplain southwest of the historic center in the early 16th century. The name, meaning “little island,” refers to the 100-acre swampy landmass created by a branch of the Arno beginning around piazza Paolo Uccello and running along today’s via Torcicoda before rejoining the river downstream.
For decades, this riverside stretch across from today’s Cascine Park was used as a massive garbage dump. Then, in 1950, it was chosen as the Florentine site for the national Fanfani Public Housing Plan, a conspicuous example of the postwar Italian economic miracle. Also known as the INA-Casa Plan, it got the attention of U.S. officials, who criticized it for using Marshall Plan funds to produce social housing and jobs rather than beef up the purchasing power of middle-class Italians. On November 6, 1954, Florence Mayor Giorgio La Pira gave keys to 1,000 families. In total, over 14 years, 350,000 low-cost-housing units were built and 600,000 construction jobs were created.
Isolotto Vecchio, whose design involved key architects like Michelucci and Poggi, was planned as a self-sufficient neighborhood inspired by the English garden-city urban planning movement and U.S. greenbelt communities. Budding architects study it as an important example of human-centered, organic urban design. “It still has that neighborhood feeling,” says Grosseto-born Ilaria Naldini, who co-founded the association Isolotto delle Mamme. “It’s lively and soulful. People say hi, they stop to talk to each other.”
That community feeling was baked in, with early residents obtaining the services they needed and building the area’s first school—the Baracche Verdi (“green shacks”)—themselves. After the school was moved onto the “mountain” created by the dump site a decade later to become the beloved Montagnola, the Baracche Verdi became a center for community groups like today’s Little Peace School run by UNIFI professor Giovanni Scotto. It’s also home to the religious community started by Don Enzo Mazzi, the rebellious, pioneering “street priest” who attracted worldwide attention in the ‘60s for his grassroots approach, embodying the inclusivity that Isolotto is known for.
“It still represents an idea of community and identity, while other neighborhoods in Florence are emptying out,” says Sorani. “It’s different because it’s so livable. Even newcomers quickly develop a strong sense of belonging, of wanting to defend the neighborhood. It brings out the best in its residents.” Unsurprisingly, the so-called Fourth Quarter of Florence boasts more nuclear families than any other. (The First Quarter around the Duomo has the least.)
Isolotto is also the greenest place in Florence, as you can see on any city map. Throw a stone and you’ll hit one of its dozen tree-filled playgrounds. This makes it a haven for sporty types, filled with bike paths, pitches and courts, not to mention the only golf course in Florence proper. With the brand-new PalaWanny sports arena, a skate park, an American football club and an upcoming new public pool, the massive San Bartolo a Cintoia Park is becoming a veritable athletic village.
There are plenty of attractions for non-residents too, all steps from the nearest tram stop. Young families will delight in the expansive Villa Vogel park with its duck pond, funfair rides and newly refurbished bar. Japanese food lovers will relish Ramen Girl, whose reputation has exceeded the area’s borders and design-minded tourists can stay at the tony Riva Lofts boutique hotel along the river, which also offers catered gourmet dinners to the public.
Finally, visitors can escape the foreign hordes to bask in what remains an authentic slice of Italian life in the quaint main square, piazza Isolotto, whose recent redesign won a prize for capturing the area’s identity as a harmonious hub for all walks of life. “The piazza is the heart,” says naturopath and counsellor Anna Gori, who has lived here for 22 years. “There’s the church, the market, the river running alongside…The neighborhood’s history is marked by pain and conflict, but also by redemption and solidarity.”
