Piazza della Signoria

Florence's main square is a public living room filled with ancient and Renaissance statues and fountains

*** Piazza della Signoria (Town Square)

Sights nearby
*** Uffizi [museum]
** Palazzo Vecchio [palace/museum]
** Ponte Vecchio [bridge]
* Museum of Science [museum]
Orsanmichele [church]

Where to eat nearby
*** I Fratellini [snack]
* Le Mossacce [meal]
* Acqua Al 2 [meal]
Le Volpi e l'Uva [snack]

Hotels nearby
Relais Piazza Signoria [moderate]
Residenza Della Signoria [cheap]
Galigai Tower [cheap/moderate]
La Casa Del Garbo [moderate]
Relais Uffizi [moderate]
Gallery Hotel Art [premier]
» More hotels near the Piazza della Signoria

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Pizza della Signoria, with Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia de' Lanzi.
Pizza della Signoria, with the Palazzo Vecchio on the left and Loggia de' Lanzi on the right.In Italy, all roads lead to Rome, but in Florence all roads lead to the elegant Piazza della Signoria—the cultural, political, and social heart of the city since the 14th century.

It's a lively, statue-studded square lined with cafés and home to the fortresslike Palazzo Vecchio, off which stretches the "U" of the Uffizi Galleries, Florence's great art museum.

The Loggia de' Lanzi

On the south side of Piazza della Signoria—just to the right of the long U of the Uffizi—is the 14th-century Loggia dei Lanzi (also called Loggia della Signoria or sometimes, after its architect, Loggia di Orcagna), Florence's most captivating outdoor sculpture gallery. You might recognize it as the site where Lucy swooned after witnessing a murder in A Room with a View.

The loggia has finally been freed of its scaffolding, and is open to visitors for the first time in decades. Benvenuto Cellini's rare 1545 work Perseus was returned here in 2000 after a four-year (and sorely needed) restoration.

Giambologna's important Rape of the Sabine is a three-dimensional study in Mannerism (also check out his full-scale plaster study for it in the Accademia), and stands alongside his Hercules Slaying the Centaur and Duke Cosimo de' Medici.

The wallflower statues standing against the back are ancient Roman originals.

This Old Palace—The Palazzo Vecchio

The square is dominated by an imposing rough-hewn fortress, the late 13th-century Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), still Florence's city hall. Its severe Gothic style, replete with crenellations and battlements, is highlighted by a 308-foot campanile that was a supreme feat of engineering in its day. Full story

The raised platform-like porch before the Palazzo Vecchio—the platform, from which orators once addressed the crowds in piazza, is called the aringaria, which is where we got our word "harague"—is lined with statues.

Flanking the life-size copy of Michelangelo's David (the original is in the Accademia) are copies of Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (original in the musuem inside) and the Marzocco (original in the Bargello), the heraldic lion of Florence.

Unfortunately placed next to David's anatomical perfection, on teh other side of the stone steps, is Baccio Bandelli's Heracles (1534), which comes across looking like the "sack of melons" Cellini described it to be.

The Neptune Fountain & the Bonfire of the Vanities

The execution of Girolamo Savaonarola
The execution of Girolamo Savonarola on Piazza delal Signoria, an anonymous painting of 1498 (now in Museo San Marco).Off the north corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is the piazza's enormous (and controversially awful) Neptune Fountain, carved by Ammanati in 1576 and ringed by (far more interesting) spritely bronze figures cast by Giambologna.

In front of this fountains, a small disk in the ground marks the spot where religious fundamentalist, the "mad monk" from Ferrara Fra' Savonarola was hanged and then burned at the stake for heresy in 1498.

This was just a few short years after Savonarola—while he held the city under his sway and ruled the city as a theocracy during the Medici's temporary exile from Florence—incited the original "bonfires of the vanities." Full story

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This material was last updated July 2010. All information was accurate at the time.

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