The author focuses on Florentine libertas, identifying in the work of Coluccio Salutati the turning point between the polysemy of the notion in the previous ideological tradition of the city and the reorientation in a more openly hierarchical sense subsequently operated by Leonardo Bruni. In Salutati's vision, the freedom of the city is not only resolved in autonomy or self-government but also in the balance of the social components guaranteed by the supervision of the upper class of the "optimized", guarantors of good functioning through the repression of men's violent impulses the most virtuous by the most virtuous: this paradigm will give rise to a true conceptualization of the vita activa, placing the pursuit of freedom at the center of a project aimed at reviving the civic ethics of the Florentines.