# Interior view [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ARCHITECT, Italian]() - Date: 1251-1300 - Technique: Photo ## Commentary Orsanmichele is located on the Via dei Calzaiuoli, close to the cathedral square in Florence. An eight-century nunnery on the site, dedicated to St Michael, had been pulled down in 1240 and replaced by a corn market. After a fire in 1304, a new public building was erected. Originally the ground floor was used as a market, and it was not until 1367 to 1380 that the open arcades were closed by Simone Talenti. From then onwards, the ground floor served as a centre for the craftsmen's guild of Florence. Despite a wide-ranging network of stylistic linkages and the mention of many names in later documents, the original designer of the loggia, with its two central piers and its six bays of vaulting resting on round arches, is unknown. Internally and externally its original elements testify that the development of fourteenth-century Florentine architecture depends as much on the refinement of the Romanesque vocabulary of form as on the evolution of a specifically Gothic idiom. In 1336, the fourteen niches on the exterior had been placed at the disposal of the most important guilds. Given that, by the beginning of the fifteenth century, only one of the niches had been filled with a figural ornament, the city felt it had no option but to impose a ten year deadline by which time the remaining tabernacles had to be filled. ## Related artworks - [Aerial view]() - [Aerial view]() - [Apse of a basilica]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Arsenale Gateway]() - [Basilica di Sant'Antonio: Chiostro del Noviziato]() - [Basilica Santi Nereo e Achilleo]() - [Ca' Foscari: Façade]() - [Chamber of the millers]() - [Chiesa dell'Incoronata: Interior of the dome]() - [Cloister gallery]() - [Detail of the façade]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()