1_ENG_Storia_102-143_beg_Layout 1 12/03/13 19:23 Pagina 139
In the aftermath of the thwarted designs of Ismail Pasha – the former viceroy of Egypt who had purchased Palazzo Della Gherardesca, including its contents and garden to make it into his Italian residence, complete with harem – the property of Borgo Pinti became the scene of important frequentations and strategic alliances that left an enduring mark on the Italian economy in the 20th century. In 1885 the complex was sold by Pasha to Count Pietro Bastogi, former finance minister in the Cavour government and founder of the Banca Toscana di Credito in 1862, the same year Bastogi had also founded the Southern Railways Company, of which he himself was president. At the time the building was bought, in 1885, the Company administered the railway network from Ancona to Otranto, as well as the Calabrian and Sicilian branches; in that same year, a state convention also granted control over the lines of Lombardy, Emilia and the Veneto, this amounting to a total of 4379 km of railway. Palazzo Della Gherardesca became the company’s head office. But it was the year 1939 that marked a real turning-point in the history of the property, which nonetheless had never ceased playing a role as a centralizer of power.At this time the property was bought by the Orlando
v View from the garden of one of the facades of
family, which owned it for more than sixty years. Luigi Orlando was the president and limited majority shareholder of an economic empire based on specialized copper products and sustained by financial
Palazzo Scala-Della Gherardesca, Florence.
associations interwoven with what Eugenio Scalfari and Giuseppe Turani have called “the noble wing
v
of Italian capitalism”.1 Following a meticulous restoration of the building, Orlando established here the head offices of Generali Industrie Metallurgiche (GIM) and Società Metallurgica Italiana (SMI). The Sicilian Orlando family, which had played an important role in the Risorgimento and contributed financially to Garibaldi’s expedition of the Thousand, moved initially to Genoa and then to Tuscany, passing from naval activity to metalworking. The founder of the family, Luigi, was born in Palermo in 1814 and at an early age started working in the mechanical workshop of his father Giuseppe. In 1902 his grandson, also named Luigi, bought SMI, one of the oldest industrial companies in the country, founded in 1886. With the industrial plants of Campo Tizzoro (Pistoia) and Fornaci di Barga (Lucca) SMI became a cornerstone of the Italian productive system and was decisive in the course of the Great War. The group, which in the meantime had moved from Livorno to Florence, had also entered into the business of electrical energy (with Centrale and Valdarno) and through a share in Bastogi also made inroads in the railways sector. It was in fact from Bastogi that the Orlando family bought Palazzo Della Gherardesca in 1939, and it was here – at a crucial time for the fortunes of the country then entering the Second World War, allied with Germany – that in the following year the company’s headquarters were established.
139