In the Club’s centenary year, thirteen remarkable photographs from the Foto Locchi Archive portray the people at the heart of the Viola community

Starting on August 22nd, the Cortile di Michelozzo at Palazzo Vecchio in Firenze will host the exhibition One Hundred Years of Florentines. Inside and Outside the Stadium, promoted by ACF Fiorentina in collaboration with the Foto Locchi Archive and under the patronage of the Municipality of Firenze.

The exhibition looks at Viola history from an unusual perspective. Not through sporting achievements, champions or trophies, but through the city that has stood alongside its team for a century. From the 1930s to the mid-1990s, the photographs create a narrative in which the true protagonist is the Viola community: men, women, children and entire families who, inside and outside the stadium, transformed each match into a shared experience.

The exhibition does not follow a sporting chronology, but rather a human and emotional geography. Sunday begins in the streets, passes through the neighbourhoods, fills the trams, brings Campo di Marte to life and leads towards the stadium. The journey matters just as much as the destination; the anticipation, the encounters and the gestures that precede kick-off become part of a ritual capable of renewing itself over time. Even when the match is watched far from the stands, gathered around a small television set, that passion retains its power to bring an entire community together.

“Through this exhibition, made possible by the extraordinary heritage of the Foto Locchi Historical Archive, we wanted to pay tribute to Firenze and to all Fiorentina supporters. Year after year, generation after generation, through their passion and their sense of belonging, they have helped shape the Viola identity. And it is no coincidence that this exhibition is being held in the heart of Firenze: we wanted it to be accessible to everyone, because Fiorentina’s history belongs to the entire city and to everyone who shares its passion,” commented Giuseppe B. Commisso, President of ACF Fiorentina.

“The Foto Locchi Archive preserves hundreds of thousands of images devoted to the history of Fiorentina,” added Erika Ghilardi, Head of the Foto Locchi Archive. “I consider it a privilege that, on the occasion of the Club’s centenary, this extraordinary visual heritage has been explored not only for its documentary richness, but also for its most distinctive quality: its ability to transform the events of the day into shared memory, giving a community back the emotions that have marked its collective experience.”

Alongside places and people, the images also capture the transformation of Florentine society throughout the twentieth century. Clothing, postures, behaviours and the way people experience public spaces all change over time. From the understated elegance of the 1930s to the post-war period, from the economic boom to the final decades of the century, the stands become an unintended portrait of their time. The city’s political and social history emerges through the details of everyday life, the faces in the crowd and the different forms that participation takes.

The city, the stadium and the streets filled with supporters all become part of this shared heritage of experiences. These photographs tell the story of a city changing in every possible way.

The photographs belong to the Foto Locchi Archive, which is protected by the Italian Ministry of Culture and has become one of the most important visual records of the history of Firenze. With more than five million photographs preserved and approximately 300,000 images digitised, the Archive documents a century of city life, from everyday moments to sport, from fashion to entertainment, from culture to major historical events.

One Hundred Years of Florentines, One Hundred Years of Fiorentina therefore presents the reverse angle of the team’s official history: what happens in the stands, in the streets, at railway stations and throughout the neighbourhoods; what remains in the memories of a Sunday spent with family, an away trip, a friendship or a particular season of life.

One hundred years after Fiorentina was founded, celebrating the team also means paying tribute to the people who have stood by it and loved it. Because the Viola century is made not only of what happened on the pitch, but also of everything that happened around it, creating an enduring bond between Firenze and its team.