Piazza della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria took shape in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the construction of the Palazzo dei Priori, renamed Palazzo Vecchio in the sixteenth century. It immediately became the city’s political centre and a space for civic life. The symbolic building, still home to Florence’s municipal government, offers several museum routes: the monumental apartments, the archaeological area with the remains of the Roman theatre, and the Tower of Arnolfo with its splendid panorama. The square acquired roughly its present size during the fourteenth century, through the demolition of many private buildings and two churches, and the construction of the Loggia della Signoria, or dei Lanzi, to the west and the Merchants’ Tribunal, now Gucci Garden, to the northeast. Later work focused mainly on sculpture, culminating under the grand dukes in the loggia’s transformation into an open-air museum. Building the Uffizi in the mid-sixteenth century created a new vista towards the river; its gallery is now Italy’s most visited painting collection. The square also shared in the nineteenth-century renewal of the historic centre, with additions in Renaissance Revival style. Long central to political life, it became the setting for major events that changed history well beyond Florence. In front of the Neptune Fountain, one of the city’s finest fountains, a plaque marks the exact spot where Fra Girolamo Savonarola and two followers were burned on 23 May 1498. The traditional Fiorita ceremony commemorates this each year. Alongside the Loggia dei Lanzi’s celebrated sculptures, especially Cellini’s Perseus and Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines, the works before Palazzo Vecchio include Michelangelo’s David, a copy of the original in the Accademia; and Donatello’s Marzocco and Judith and Holofernes, copies whose originals are in the Bargello and Palazzo Vecchio respectively. Giambologna’s equestrian monument to Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, presides over the square.