Transformations in the early centuries

In 1467, the “honourable gentlemen” of the Ceppi decided to “acconciare, accresce e rinovare la casa del detto ceppo insino al canto di Piero di ser Naldo intorno intorno, al pari della casa vecchia et questo per utilità del detto Ceppo e per di ornamento della terra di Prato” (Archivio di Stato di Prato, Ceppi, 394, c. 46).

On the Via Rinaldesca side, probably in the seventeenth century, a loggia on Tuscan columns was built in pietra serena. The change of use of the spaces and the divisions created by partitions complied with the new function assumed by the palazzo after the foundation of the Ceppi. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the charity institute donated funds for food and for the purchase of work instruments; already in 1589 the palazzo also began the distribution of bread which, until then, had been the task of monasteries: in 1713 the Ceppi distributed bread to around 2,700 people in the town out of a population of 6,000, and assisted around 2,000 people out of 9,000 living in the surrounding rural area.