Planning row erupts in iconic Italian city over 'eyesore' black cube flats as police launch probe

Even the city’s nobility has intervened, breaking cover to stop any further developments from spoiling the Florence skyline that has changed little in hundreds of years.

The Black Cube – officially called the Teatro Luxury Apartments – resides near the US embassy and the Santa Maria Novella train station, and includes smart restaurants, spas and underground parking.

The modern palazzo, managed by the Star Hotels chain, offers 150 short-term rental units for high-income students and professionals.

Florentine prosecutors are now questioning 12 people who are under investigation for irregularities in the permitting, planning and zoning process that paved the way for the Black Cube to rise high above the former site of the Teatro Comunale.

They are trying to trace how the property was decommissioned and sold in 2013 by the then Matteo Renzi city administration.

The property reportedly passed through a state entity before being auctioned off to an Italian investment subsidiary.

From there, it was sold to a joint venture formed by property giants Blue Noble and Hines, within the Future Living fund managed by London-based Savills, which has maintained it was constructed with all the necessary permits in place.

In the centre of the Renaissance city, residents cannot even change the shade of their window shutters without an extensive bureaucratic permit process.

People are now questioning just how a US property developer was granted permission to build something locals also refer to as “The Monster of Corso Italia”.

Ancient noble families have called for checks on further high-end developments down river from the Black Cube, in a former industrial area near the former Leopolda railway station.

In a letter to the mayor, the 16 combined noble families said: “We must save Florence from any other ‘black cubes’. No more violence toward our city.”

Some of the letter’s signatory families have owned property in the city since the Medici era, between 1434 and 1737.

The nobles speaking out have been coined “Operation Blue Blood” by local media, largely thanks to a lobbying effort by Roberto Budini Gattai, an architect nicknamed the Communist Nobleman, who has been at the forefront of the protests.

Claude Marie Agnès Cathérine d’Orléans, 82, a French princess and former Duchess of Aosta, who married Prince Amedeo of Savoy in 1964, is among the signatories.

The princess is not one to mince her words, saying: “The Black Cube and the Social Hub on Viale Belfiore are monstrosities.

“I apologise to the architects who designed them, but that’s the way it is. I don’t understand why, when you do something new, you don’t try - I don’t mean copying - but perhaps taking inspiration from older buildings."