ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how issues of gender, class, space, and mobility for Renaissance Italian women were addressed by two trails in the Hidden Florence app and translated into locative public history and classroom pedagogy. It addresses the issues involved in constructing voices for the real historical figure of Niccolosa Alessandri, an aristocratic widow in the 1490s, and for Marietta, an invented character who grew up in the city orphanage and worked in the textile industry in the 1560s. It examines how the trails were devised to show how female life cycles and urban networks were shaped by status and circumstance and by the tension between mobility and enclosure, with special attention to the critical role played by institutions such as convents, orphanages, and shelters in shaping female social, religious, and economic experience. The chapter reflects on the importance of intersectional public histories that are both engaging and inclusive, and discusses how the researchers transferred what initially were onsite experiences into the classroom.
