Piazza della Signoria & Palazzo Vecchio: Savonarola's Fire
Why is it significant?
Find the round stone plaque set into the pavement in front of the Neptune Fountain, then lift your eyes to the fortress-palace beside it and its tower rising to almost a hundred metres. That plaque marks the spot where the Republic burned its own prophet.
Key Facts
| Place | Piazza della Signoria & Palazzo Vecchio: Savonarola's Fire |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza della Signoria, 50122 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.76960, 11.25580 |
| Part of Walk | Guilds, Feuds and Bonfires: The Florentine Republic Walk in Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the round stone plaque set into the pavement in front of the Neptune Fountain, then lift your eyes to the fortress-palace beside it and its tower rising to almost a hundred metres. That plaque marks the spot where the Republic burned its own prophet.
Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar from Ferrara who preached in Florence about corruption, luxury and coming punishment. When the Medici were driven out in 1494 his influence became enormous; in this square his followers lit bonfires of vanities, burning mirrors, cards, fine clothes and paintings. But he defied the Pope, an ordeal by fire planned in 1498 never took place, and the crowd turned on him. On 23 May 1498, after torture and trial, he and two fellow friars were hanged and burned right here, and their ashes thrown into the Arno.
The palace was begun in 1299 as the Palazzo dei Priori, the home of the government whose first seat you saw in Piazza San Martino. Its bell, nicknamed the Cow, called citizens to assembly. After 1494 a vast hall was built inside for the Great Council of the restored Republic, and Leonardo and Michelangelo were both commissioned to paint battle scenes for its walls. Neither ever finished.
Every statue here is a political argument. The Republic set Michelangelo's David at the palace door in 1504 as a warning to tyrants; the original stood there until 1873. Then the Medici answered with their own: Cellini's Perseus in the loggia, and Giambologna's bronze Cosimo I on horseback in the middle of the square. After a final siege in 1530 the Republic was gone for good, and Florence belonged to dukes.
Yet the city remembers. Every year on 23 May, Florentines cover this plaque with flowers and scatter petals into the river from Ponte Vecchio. Charity and guilds, feuds and bankers, a prison and a bonfire... you have walked the whole life of a republic in a single morning. Look up at that tower once more. It was built to say that Florence governed itself.