Houses--or rather fortresses--that must have cost fortunes and have been occupied by families of wealth and splendour were erected so close to their vis-a-vis that two carts could not pass abreast between them.

Side by side contiguity one can understand, but not this other adjacence.

Every ground floor window is barred like a gaol.

Those bars tell us something of the perils of life in Florence in the great days of faction ambition; while the thickness of the walls and solidity of construction tell us something too of the integrity of the Florentine builders.

These ancient palaces, one feels, whatever may happen to them, can never fall to ruin.