Tour guides the world over operate in strikingly similar ways: they develop, or are given, a list of topographically sequenced stops, each sight summarily described for its artistic or historical significance. Once hardened into a program, the sequence is endlessly repeated without the slightest variation to this rigidly established timing and progression. Florence, with monuments densely packed in its antique center, is the queen city of walking tours. On every day of every season, one can see platoons of attentive tourists following their leaders’ guidons (preferably old umbrellas) doing the canonical rounds: Piazza della Signoria, Orsanmichele, the Duomo, the Uffizi complex, the great conventual churches of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, and so on.
As familiar as the sight has become, it is difficult to imagine an enterprising Florentine tour operator devising an itinerary comprised only of post-nineteenth-century sights. It would rest on the somewhat subversive proposition that Florence did, in fact, have a history rich in artistic and architectural accomplishments even after 1600—a proposition that might well lead a tour entrepreneur to financial ruin and universal ridicule. And yet, the storied “Renaissance city” holds countless modern surprises, if one only knows where and how to look, particularly when remembering that, of all historic Italian cities, Florence’s antique topography has suffered the most devastating losses—and the most radical subsequent reconstructions.
Florentines of an older generation still refer to this as “Piazza Vittorio” rather than “Piazza della Repubblica.”
The first and possibly most consequential of
