Mud Angels

As the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance, Florence was home to such luminaries as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Machiavelli, Galileo and Brunelleschi. Centuries later, the city contains what UNESCO describes as “the greatest concentration of universally renowned works of art in the world.”

On November 4, 1966, torrential rains caused the Arno River, which runs through Florence’s historic center, to burst its banks. Floodwater coursed through the streets, engulfing many of the city’s most revered churches, museums and libraries in mud, debris and sewage. The water quickly receded, but its catastrophic impact remained: beyond the damage to thousands of Florentine businesses and homes, the flood had left more than 10,000 artworks and millions of precious books and manuscripts soaked in filth.

In the wake of the disaster, art scholars, curators, conservators and patrons around the world launched fundraising initiatives to support the recovery and long-term restoration of Florence’s art and cultural heritage. Meanwhile, from across Italy, Europe and other parts of the world, waves of students, backpackers and other young people began arriving in Florence to assist the monumental effort to clean up the city and rescue its treasures. Writing in History Today, Richard Jobs explains: “These youthful workers were not organized, nor had they been recruited. They simply turned up.”

Improvising to accommodate the influx of volunteers, Florence mayor Piero Bargellini established housing in passenger trains stationed in the city railyard and converted the kitchen at the Galleria dell’Accademia into a canteen. Relief efforts were coordinated through a central office at the Uffizi Gallery, which assigned workers to places of greatest need. 

Volunteers in rubber boots formed a human chain to carry books and manuscripts out of the basement of the National Library, while others cleared mud out of the Church of Santa Croce or rescued priceless paintings from the underground warehouses of the Uffizi Gallery. As one Florentine recalled to Jobs, even before the Italian government could dispatch military responders to the scene: “the city was already in the hands of the young.”

Florentines soon dubbed them gli angeli del fango – the Mud Angels. In 1996, Florence mayor Mario Primicerio reflected on the unforgettable atmosphere of solidarity and collective generosity he had experienced as a young professor working alongside his students in 1966: “[We] lost all perception of our personal geographical limits. Italians, French, Germans or Americans no longer existed: it was the international community that worked to try to save Florence, this unique patrimony which belonged to the whole world.”

Contributor: Erin Brown