ABSTRACT
Trade loggias became increasingly common during the thirteenth century, in Italy itself and for communities of Italians in both Byzantium and in territories in the eastern Mediterranean. The Venetian merchant Emmanuel Piloti commented that in Famagusta, one of the main commercial streets was "filled with magnificent loggias belonging to every Christian nation with power." Benedetto Varchi noted that in sixteenth-century Florence, only twenty-six loggias and porticos, which had once been a prominent aspect of the medieval environment, remained. The architectural historian Charles Burroughs has written that the elimination of loggias and porticos during the Renaissance had a significant implication: their absence "clarified and emphasized the articulation between the space of the house itself and that of the street or piazza. The Mercato Nuovo loggia shows a marked cultural desire to affirm and appropriate the legacy of Florentine architecture and the form of the loggia itself.
