Description
Piazzale Michelangelo is Florence's great panoramic terrace, on the hill south of the Arno, in the Oltrarno. It is perhaps the city's most famous viewpoint, reproduced on countless postcards: from here you can see all of Florence at a single glance.
The panorama takes in the heart of the city, from Forte Belvedere to Santa Croce, along the Lungarni and the bridges lined up one after another, above all the Ponte Vecchio. The Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio and the Bargello stand out, and opposite you see the hills with Fiesole and Settignano.
At the center stands the bronze copy of the David, with four more copies around it: the allegories from the Medici Chapels of San Lorenzo. The originals are all in white marble and are kept in the city. The monument came up here on June 25, 1873, hauled by nine pairs of oxen.
Over the terrace towers the neoclassical loggia, also by the architect Giuseppe Poggi: it was meant to house a Michelangelo museum, which never came to be. On the wall of the balcony, under the loggia, an inscription in huge letters honors the architect: “look around you, here is his monument”.
Work began in 1869, when Florence was the capital of Italy and was giving itself a makeover: new riverside avenues, boulevards in place of the 14th-century walls and, on the hill of San Miniato, the Viale dei Colli, eight kilometers of tree-lined road. At the top, Poggi put this terrace.
Not everyone applauded. The journalist Yorick, who wrote about its rapid construction, reports Florentines unhappy “about the excessive expense”. Between 1890 and 1935, moreover, the Chianti tramway also ran past here, bound for San Casciano and Greve.
Even Leonardo Pieraccioni joked about it, in a song dedicated to the city: “Florence is tiny... and seen from the piazzale, she looks like a little girl dressed up for carnival”.
You can get here by car along Viale Michelangelo, or on foot from the Rampe del Poggi, the monumental staircases that start from Piazza Poggi, in San Niccolò.
The panorama takes in the heart of the city, from Forte Belvedere to Santa Croce, along the Lungarni and the bridges lined up one after another, above all the Ponte Vecchio. The Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio and the Bargello stand out, and opposite you see the hills with Fiesole and Settignano.
At the center stands the bronze copy of the David, with four more copies around it: the allegories from the Medici Chapels of San Lorenzo. The originals are all in white marble and are kept in the city. The monument came up here on June 25, 1873, hauled by nine pairs of oxen.
Over the terrace towers the neoclassical loggia, also by the architect Giuseppe Poggi: it was meant to house a Michelangelo museum, which never came to be. On the wall of the balcony, under the loggia, an inscription in huge letters honors the architect: “look around you, here is his monument”.
Work began in 1869, when Florence was the capital of Italy and was giving itself a makeover: new riverside avenues, boulevards in place of the 14th-century walls and, on the hill of San Miniato, the Viale dei Colli, eight kilometers of tree-lined road. At the top, Poggi put this terrace.
Not everyone applauded. The journalist Yorick, who wrote about its rapid construction, reports Florentines unhappy “about the excessive expense”. Between 1890 and 1935, moreover, the Chianti tramway also ran past here, bound for San Casciano and Greve.
Even Leonardo Pieraccioni joked about it, in a song dedicated to the city: “Florence is tiny... and seen from the piazzale, she looks like a little girl dressed up for carnival”.
You can get here by car along Viale Michelangelo, or on foot from the Rampe del Poggi, the monumental staircases that start from Piazza Poggi, in San Niccolò.