Piazza Santa Maria Novella: Cosimo's Chariot Race

Why is it significant?

Walk to the southern side of this long square and look back towards the church: two slender marble obelisks rise from the paving, each resting on four small bronze tortoises. They look like ornaments. They are actually turning posts.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk to the southern side of this long square and look back towards the church: two slender marble obelisks rise from the paving, each resting on four small bronze tortoises. They look like ornaments. They are actually turning posts.

In 1563 Duke Cosimo I created the Palio dei Cocchi, a chariot race in the Roman style, run in this square on the eve of the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the city's patron. Horse-drawn chariots thundered round the two posts while the crowd packed the edges. A Medici duke playing at ancient Rome... it was propaganda and entertainment in one. The first posts were wooden; the marble obelisks came in the early 1600s, and the tortoises are attributed to Giambologna. Slowest animal, fastest race. And the joke had a point: Cosimo's personal motto was festina lente, make haste slowly, and his emblem was a tortoise carrying a sail.

The square itself was opened by the Dominicans in the thirteenth century, enlarged so that crowds could gather to hear their preachers. On the southern side runs the Loggia di San Paolo, the portico of an old hospital, decorated with glazed terracotta medallions by Andrea della Robbia, including a scene of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic meeting and embracing.

And this square has a famous literary moment. Boccaccio opens the Decameron inside the church in front of you, during the Black Death of 1348. Seven young women meet there after Mass, decide to escape the dying city with three young men, and spend ten days in the hills telling each other one hundred stories. One of the great books of European literature begins on this spot.

For centuries this was a gateway: travellers arriving from the west, and later from the railway station just behind the church, came into Florence across this square, and grand hotels grew up around it. Now walk to the northern side and stand before the marble façade.