Stinche Prison

The Stinche Prison (Italian: carcere delle Stinche) was a prison on Via Ghibellina in the city of Florence, Italy. It stood more or less on the site now occupied by the Teatro Verdi.

The earliest mention of a prison in Florence refers to the Burellæ, the vaults under the ruins of the city's ancient Roman amphitheatre and theatre, which remained visible for most of the medieval period. Next the city built or adapted towers as prisons, such as the torre della Pagliazza. People were also imprisoned in the basement of the Palazzo del Capitano or the Bargello. A cramped but less spartan gaol known as the "Alberghetto" was sited in the Torre di Arnolfo of the Palazzo Vecchio - its 15th century inmates included Cosimo il Vecchio and Girolamo Savonarola. All these prisons were run by private individuals and inmates had to pay one 'libbra' a day to their gaoler to cover his expenses, meaning wealthier people could buy better treatment. The poor were very harshly treated and mainly had to cover their fees from alms - there were periodic amnesties on particular holidays and religious festivals, but these only released a very limited number of prisoners and did not include murderers, political prisoners and those who had committed other serious crimes.

The Stinche complex was built from 1299 onwards by the Florentine Republic, using many stones from towers and houses owned by the Ghibelline Uberti family, which had been demolished after that family was driven out of the city following the Battle of Benevento. It was a square building surrounded by a moat and a very high 18-metre-long wall with no openings - this gave it its nickname of the "Isola delle Stinche" or "Stinche Island". The building itself had only one door, known as the "Porta della miseria" after its inscription Oportet misereri (it requires charity), referring to the fact that the prison was funded by private individuals not the state. The Buononimi di San Martino and a sub-company of the Compagnia di Santa Maria della Croce al Tempio known as the Buononimi delle Stinche gave charity to the prisoners. The Compagnia appointed four Buononimi delle Stinche to manage their donations and bequests so as to provide spiritual aid, money and food to the prisoners, especially the poorer ones who could not afford to bribe the guards for better treatment. They gained so much authority that they were granted the right to free debtors on the condition that the Buononimi became their guarantors and oversaw whether or not the debts were paid.

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