Description
Piazza Santo Spirito is the liveliest square in Florence's Oltrarno: in front of Brunelleschi's basilica, with a fountain in the middle, a garden and trattorias, bars and workshops all around. By day there is the little market, in the evening the tables stay full until late.
Despite the 19th-century touches meant to give it a bourgeois tone, the square has kept a popular character. It is frequented at all hours by Florentines and tourists together, and is among the city's most famous as a place to meet and mingle.
It was born in the 13th century for a practical reason: the sermons of the Augustinians drew crowds, and space was needed. Between 1292 and 1301 the Commune bought and tore down the houses in front of the church. The result was a space of more than five thousand square meters, then the largest in the city.
At the far end is the Basilica of Santo Spirito, Filippo Brunelleschi's last project, built from 1444 and finished in 1487. It was funded by the Signoria after the victory over the Sforza on Saint Augustine's day, August 28, 1397.
In the square people preached, held festivals and markets. At Pentecost fires were lit all over the open ground, in imitation of the little flames of the Holy Spirit. And it was after a festival, in 1471, that things went wrong.
For the arrival of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Pentecost was staged, with fires and little flames. That night, March 21, a serious fire destroyed codices and works of art in the old church. The fire sped up work on the new basilica.
In the center stands the fountain, finished in 1660, which used to be in the first cloister of the convent and served to raise fish. In 1812 Giuseppe Del Rosso moved it here. It has an octagonal basin of pietra serena and two stacked bowls, one in Medici breccia.
On the side toward Via delle Caldaie is the monument to Cosimo Ridolfi, unveiled in 1898, an agronomist and statesman who lived not far away. Around the edges run the buildings, with shrines at the corners: one has a Madonna and Child, a copy of Perugino's in Palazzo Pitti.
In the 19th century a garden came as well. According to a chronicler it attracted mostly the muzzles of the vegetable sellers' donkeys, who held a little market here every morning. The market has stayed: it is here every morning, and on weekends crafts and antiques arrive.
Don't miss
• The Basilica of Santo Spirito.
• The fountain.
• The monument to Cosimo Ridolfi.
• The little market.
Did you know?
• At number 22 a plaque commemorates the partisan "Potente," killed here by a grenade on August 8, 1944.
• A plaque from 1639 forbids playing pallottole (a bowling game) anywhere in the square, under penalty of ten scudi.
Despite the 19th-century touches meant to give it a bourgeois tone, the square has kept a popular character. It is frequented at all hours by Florentines and tourists together, and is among the city's most famous as a place to meet and mingle.
It was born in the 13th century for a practical reason: the sermons of the Augustinians drew crowds, and space was needed. Between 1292 and 1301 the Commune bought and tore down the houses in front of the church. The result was a space of more than five thousand square meters, then the largest in the city.
At the far end is the Basilica of Santo Spirito, Filippo Brunelleschi's last project, built from 1444 and finished in 1487. It was funded by the Signoria after the victory over the Sforza on Saint Augustine's day, August 28, 1397.
In the square people preached, held festivals and markets. At Pentecost fires were lit all over the open ground, in imitation of the little flames of the Holy Spirit. And it was after a festival, in 1471, that things went wrong.
For the arrival of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Pentecost was staged, with fires and little flames. That night, March 21, a serious fire destroyed codices and works of art in the old church. The fire sped up work on the new basilica.
In the center stands the fountain, finished in 1660, which used to be in the first cloister of the convent and served to raise fish. In 1812 Giuseppe Del Rosso moved it here. It has an octagonal basin of pietra serena and two stacked bowls, one in Medici breccia.
On the side toward Via delle Caldaie is the monument to Cosimo Ridolfi, unveiled in 1898, an agronomist and statesman who lived not far away. Around the edges run the buildings, with shrines at the corners: one has a Madonna and Child, a copy of Perugino's in Palazzo Pitti.
In the 19th century a garden came as well. According to a chronicler it attracted mostly the muzzles of the vegetable sellers' donkeys, who held a little market here every morning. The market has stayed: it is here every morning, and on weekends crafts and antiques arrive.
Don't miss
• The Basilica of Santo Spirito.
• The fountain.
• The monument to Cosimo Ridolfi.
• The little market.
Did you know?
• At number 22 a plaque commemorates the partisan "Potente," killed here by a grenade on August 8, 1944.
• A plaque from 1639 forbids playing pallottole (a bowling game) anywhere in the square, under penalty of ten scudi.