  The first idea of establishing a public astronomical observatory in Florence,
Capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, dates to the mid of the 18th century.
Initially, the use of a low building on a high ground was proposed, and the
hill of Arcetri suggested as a proper location. At the end of the century, the
Florence Observatory - or Specola - was built instead on a tower at the same
level as the city's centre. As soon as astronomers started to use this
observatory, they recognized all its flaws and struggled to search for a better
location. Giovanni Battista Donati, director of the Specola of Florence from
the eve of the Italian Unification in 1859, finally succeeded in creating a new
observatory: first, he obtained funds from the Parliament of the Kingdom of
Italy to build an equatorial mount for the Amici 28-cm refractor, which could
not be installed conveniently in the tower of the Specola; then, he went
through the process of selecting a proper site, seeking funds and finally
building Arcetri Observatory. Although Donati was a pioneer of spectroscopy and
astrophysics, his intent was to establish a modern observatory for classical
astronomy, as the Italian peninsula did not have a national observatory like
those located in many foreign capitals - Florence was the capital of the
Kingdom of Italy from 1865 to 1871. To promote the project, Donati made use of
writings by one of the most authoritative European astronomers, Otto Wilhelm
Struve. The paper describes all these steps, eventually leading to the final
inauguration of the Arcetri Observatory in 1872, almost 150 years ago.
