Piazza Della Signoria

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Even though it sets the stage for the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi , Florence’s main civic square - the frenetic Piazza della Signoria - doesn’t quite live up to its role. Too many of its buildings are bland nineteenth-century efforts, and the surface of the square resembles the deck of an aircraft carrier. In the 1970s, it was decided to restore the piazza’s ancient paving stones, but when the “restorers” returned the first batch, it was found that they had sandblasted chunks off them rather than rinsing them carefully. Some of the original stones then turned up in the yard of a builders’ merchant and on the front drives of a number of Tuscan villas. The subsequent scandal brought corruption charges against contractors and politicians; meanwhile, new archeological evidence of twelfth-century Florence beneath the piazza was covered up in order to preserve the tourist trade. What little charm the Piazza della Signoria does possess comes from its peculiar array of statuary , a miscellany collected at the foot of the Palazzo Vecchio. The line-up starts with Giambologna’s equestrian statue of Cosimo I and continues with Ammannati’s fatuous Neptune Fountain and copies of Donatello’s Marzocco (the city’s heraldic lion), his Judith and Holofernes and Michelangelo’s David . Near Ammannati’s fountain is a small plaque set into the pavement to mark the location of Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities and his execution pyre. The square’s grace-note, the Loggia della Signoria , was built in the late fourteenth century as a ambo for city officials during ceremonies; only in the late eighteenth century did it become a showcase for some of the city’s more melodramatic sculpture. In the corner nearest the Palazzo Vecchio stands a figure that has become one of the iconic images of the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus (removed for restoration at the time of writing, and likely to be under wraps for some time). Equally attention-seeking is Giambologna’s last work, The Rape of the Sabines , epitome of the Mannerist preoccupation with spiralling forms.