The Bardi family was an influential Florentine family that started the powerful banking company, the Compagnia dei Bardi. In the 14th century, along with the Peruzzi family, the Bardis lent Edward III of England 400,000 Gold Florins, which he never repaid, collapsing the Peruzzi Bank in 1343. During the 15th century the family continued to operate in various European centres, playing a notable role in financing some of the early voyages of discovery to America, including those by Christopher Columbus and John Cabot.

The nobility of the Bardi family has been documented since the year 1164, which is when Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa relinquished the county of Vernio to Count Alberto, along with “the right to confer the noble title on his descendents.”. Countess Margherita, the last of Alberto’s line, sold Vernio to her son-in-law, Piero de’ Bardi. Alberto’s property included “a castle and nine communes located 22 miles from Florence on an area that bordered the Mugello. During the fourteenth century the Bardi family became so powerful that the Florentine government considered them a threat. They eventually were forced to sell their castle to Florence because “fortified castles near the city were seen as a danger to the republic.”.

In the 1290s, the Bardi and Peruzzi families had established branches in England and were the main European bankers by the 1320s. By the fourteenth century the Bardi and the Peruzzi family grew tremendously wealthy by offering financial services. These two families facilitated trade by providing the merchants with bills of exchange, known today as checks. What made it so simple was that money paid by a debtor in one town could be paid out to creditor just by presenting the bill in another town. The Bardi family had thirteen different branches located in Barcelona, Seville and Marjorca, in Paris, Avignon, Nice and Marseilles, in London, Bruges, Constantinople, Rhodes, Cypress and Jerusalem. Some of Europe’s most powerful rulers were indebted to the Bardi family. This was one of the main reasons of the bankers’ downfall.

By 1338, there were more than eighty banking houses in Florence. The Bardi family had thirteen different branches located in Barcelona, Seville and Marjorca, in Paris, Avignon, Nice and Marseilles, in London, Bruges, Constantinople, Rhodes, Cypress and Jerusalem. Some of Europe’s most powerful rulers were indebted to the Bardi family. This was one of the main reasons of the bankers’ downfall.

At the start of 1340s The Hundred Years War commenced and Edward III of England was engaged in the expensive business war with France. He borrowed 600,000 gold florins from the Peruzzi banking family and another 900,000 from the Bardi family. In 1345 Edward III defaulted on his payments, causing both banking families to go bankrupt.

Despite the fact the bank failed the Bardi family ranked among Italy’s most successful merchants and continued to benefit from the noble status. There were numerous family members that occupied important positions such as crusaders, ambassadors to the Pope in Rome and some were even knights

Besides banking, the Bardi family were “great patrons of the friars.” Louise of Toulouse (1274-1297), the Franciscan bishop that was canonized in 1317, was very close the Bardi family. They purchased the chapel that was dedicated to St. Francis and to the right of the alter they built a new larger chapel and dedicated it to Louise of Toulouse. The Bardi chapel that was dedicated to St. Francis was founded by Ridolfo de Bardi around 1310. This was the same year that his father died and left him with a large inheritance and in charge of the Bardi

company. There were other Bardi chapels as well such as the one dedicated to St. Lawrence and the Martyrs, and St. Silvestor and the Confessors.

The Peruzzi were bankers of Florence, among the leading families of the city in the 14th century, before the rise to prominence of the Medici. Their modest antecedents stretched back to the mid 11th century, according to the family's genealogist Luigi Passerini, but a restructuring of the Peruzzii company in 1300, with an infusion of outside capital, marked the start of a quarter-century of prosperity that brought the family consortium to the forefront of Florentine affairs. Semi-public patronage reaffirmed the Peruzzi status in Florence: in his will in 1299, Donato di Arnoldo Peruzzi left money for a memorial chapel in a transept of the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence. It was probably his grandson Giovanni di Rinieri Peruzzi who was Giotto's patron in frescoing the walls with murals honoring John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, which Giotto executed, starting in 1313.

For economic historians, the surviving account books of the Peruzzi from the years 1335–1343 provide an indispensable primary source for the economic history of the city on the cusp of the late Medieval and Early Modern period. The contemporary chronicler Giovanni Villani is the other prime source for the family's affairs.

The company that bore the Peruzzi name was run by a half-dozen family members, and there were many Peruzzi who were neither active nor silent partners, pursuing other careers, even amassing independent capital. The company's courier system acted as an intelligence-gathering system often embroiled in diplomacy. The size of the bank should not be understated: by the 1330s, the Peruzzi bank was the second largest in Europe, with fifteen branches from the Middle East to London, all capitalized to the sum of more than 100,000 gold florins and manned by approximately 100 factors.

Peruzzi capital had been amassed in the textile business that was the main engine of Florence's prosperity. English wool finished as high-quality cloth in Bruges was bought by Peruzzi fattori and distributed to the luxurious courts of Paris, Avignon or Naples, or returned to London. Peruzzi connections with the Knights Hospitallers gained them important local leverage in Rhodes, the economic capital of the Aegean and a transshipping port for silks, drugs, spices and luxuries from the East. Trade beyond Italy required agents and instruments of credit, extending the family business beyond its extended membership into an international network. In Italy was developed the double-entry bookkeeping that made such complicated financial transactions possible. By the opening of the 14th century, the main activity of the Peruzzi had switched to wholesale commodities trading on a very large scale, especially in grain exported from the Angevine Kingdom of Naples to the central Italian cities—for which they were granted a monopoly— and to banking, the field for which they are remembered: popes, nobles, bourgeois, towns and abbeys drew loans from the Peruzzi. But great clients incurred great risks. In 1343 the Peruzzi consortium collapsed and was bankrupt in 1345, with their partners in risk-capital, the Bardi.

The traditional explanation, of unsecured loans extended to Edward III of England, is currently considered simplistic. In fact, several factors destabilized the network of trade. The war with Castruccio Castracane of Lucca bled Florentine specie to pay for mercenaries, while France and England went to war over Aquitaine, and the peasants of Flanders rose up in a revolt that was put down with the aid of mercenaries purchased with Peruzzi florins.

Not all of the family fortunes were lost in the bankruptcy, and the Peruzzi continued to figure among the prominent families of Florence, the patrizii di Firenze. Even as late as 1849, in the wake of the disturbances of 1848, the gonfaloniere of Florence was Ubaldino Peruzzi.

The tower of the fortified Villa Peruzzi in the commune of Antella south of Florence controls the main road into the Chianti district.

Members of the family who emigrated to America in the late 19th century and settled in Pennsylvania founded the Peruzzi chain of automobile dealerships and the Planters Nut and Chocolate Company.

The Compagnia dei Bardi was a Florentine banking and trading company which was started by the Bardi family. The Bardi company was one of three major Florentine banking companies (called "super-companies" by some modern scholars) that assembled large amounts of capital and established wide-ranging, diversified business networks, doing business throughout the Mediterranean and in England. The Bardi traded oil and wine, and had close economic ties to southern Italy and Sicily. Their chief product, however, was high-quality woolen cloth. The Bardi were the largest of these super-companies, however, and seem to have been 50 percent larger than their closest rival, the Peruzzi company.

In 1344, at about the same time as the Peruzzi company, the Bardi company went bankrupt and the Florentine writer Giovanni Villani blamed this on the repudiation of war loans by King Edward III of England.

However, Villani was not an independent source, his brother was a member of the Peruzzi company that also went bankrupt. Villanni said that Edward owed the Bardi 900,000 gold florins (£135,000) and the Peruzzi 600,000 (£90,000).However, the Peruzzi's records show that they never had that much capital to lend Edward III. Edward did not default on all his loans and repaid some with cash and others with royal grants of wool, a principal export of the English economy at the time.

Further, at the same time Florence was going through a period of internal disputes and the third largest financial company, the Acciaiuoli, also went bankrupt, and they did not lend any money to Edward. What loans Edward III did default on are likely only to have contributed to the financial problems in Florence, not caused them.

The bankruptcy of the Bardi and Peruzzi companies marked the decline of the medieval super-companies. However, Bardi survived, and significantly, provided the funds for several of the voyages of discovery to the Americas.