ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to search out how Tuscans lived with neighbours whom they didn't really like. A spatial and sensory approach to cross-cultural relations in early modern Florence, Siena, and Livorno allows us to explore the dynamics of their ambivalence by inviting us to sense the sound of a wall – or the smell, touch, or sight of it. Here, we encounter a broader range of boundaries and limitations. Not all walls were made of brick, stone, or wood, and the absence of walls didn't necessarily translate into openness. When we aim to understand how communities lived in relation to each other, we certainly have to examine the legal and physical structures they built. Yet we also need to explore how they reinforced these with sounds, smells, sights, and touch. The senses gave an experiential structure to space. Neighbours and neighbourhood were the critical building blocks of Renaissance Italian cities. But neighbours don't always get along. Renaissance Italians thought carefully about the relation of space and sense, about community and who was inside or outside it, about how some bodies might pollute particular spaces, and how to keep that from happening.
