Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(Piazza di San Giovanni; combined ticket to dome, baptistry, campanile, crypt and museum adult/child un-
der 14 €10/free; 11.15am-6.30pm Mon-Sat, 8.30am-1.30pm Sun & 1st Sat of month)
Across from
the cathedral is Florence's 11th-century Romanesque baptistry, an octagonal striped struc-
ture of white-and-green marble with three sets of doors conceived as a series of panels in
which the story of humanity and the Redemption would be told. Buy tickets from the tick-
et office opposite the northern doors at Via de' Cerretani 7.
Andrea Pisano executed the southern doors (1330), illustrating the life of St John the
Baptist, and Lorenzo Ghiberti won a public competition in 1401 to design the northern
doors, today replaced by copies (the originals were removed in 2013 and are currently be-
ing restored for eventual display in the Grande Museo del Duomo). But it is Ghiberti's gil-
ded bronze doors at the eastern entrance, known as the Gate of Paradise (Porta del
Paradiso), that are the most celebrated. What you see today is are likewise copies of the
panels - the gleaming, polished originals take pride of place in the Grande Museo del
Duomo.
Dante counts among the famous dunked in the Baptistry's baptismal font.
Piazza della Signoria
(Piazza della Signoria)
Edged by historic cafes, crammed with Renaissance sculptures and
presided over by magnificent Palazzo Vecchio, this photogenic piazza has been the hub of
local life for centuries. Early evening and all day at weekends, Florentines indulge in the
sacrosanct
passeggiata
(evening stroll), breaking for a coffee, hot chocolate or
aperitivo
,
perhaps at the city's most famous cafe, Caffè Rivoire (
Click here
).
Whenever the city entered one of its innumerable political crises, the people would be
called here as a
parlamento
(people's plebiscite) to rubber-stamp decisions that frequently
meant ruin for some ruling families and victory for others. Scenes of great pomp and cir-
cumstance alternated with those of terrible suffering: it was here that vehemently pious
preacher-leader Savonarola set fire to the city's art - books, paintings, musical instru-
ments, mirrors, fine clothes and so on - during his famous 'Bonfire of the Vanities' in
1497, and where he was hung in chains and burnt as a heretic, along with two other sup-
porters a year later.
The same spot where both fires burned is marked by a bronze plaque embedded in the
With its pin-headed bronze satyrs and divinities frolicking at its edges, this huge fountain
PIAZZA
