By Luca Pagliai, Massimo Bartoloni,
Silvia Montauti, Giada Sanchini
(Università di Firenze, Corso di Laurea in Media e Giornalismo)

“We were happy of our district. It was at the edge of the city centre and reached the first buildings of the city outskirts, where via Aretina started , with its gardens and the railway line, the first bourgeois houses and the cottages. […] Washing hung at the windows, women half – undressed. But also poverty suffered with pride, beloved strongly defended. Working class, and more properly, carpenters, cobblers, blacksmiths, mechanics, mosaic makers. And dives, smoky and shining shops, cafes. The street. Florence. Santa Croce district.”

That’s how Vasco Pratolini described the Santa Croce district at the beginning of the Forties in his novel “Il Quartiere”.

Nowadays – in 2004 – only the name and the past of the people that characterized the district are left. Walking the streets we see a reality that is different from the one that Pratolini described. The quality of life improved, but many things that distinguished the life in the district are now lost: “We all knew each other”, a man tells us, “and even if we were poorer, we were always ready to help one another”.

Walking in Santa Croce Square we can see the phenomenon of the mass–tourism, thousands of tourists crowd the square every day: “Florence is now only a museum”, says bitterly a shopkeeper; “because of the pedestrian area the trades are moved out of the centre. The city centre is now only history”. With the modernization the simple traditions that joined the people of the district are lost: “I can remember that the Rificolona used to bring a lot of people in the streets at the beginning of September. Now just a few people.”
Speaking with who always lived in this area we understand how much it changed in the last 30 – 40 years. Santa Croce is now known for its monuments and not for its life, made of ordinary people, simple and frank, that once coloured the streets of the district.

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