Le Murate: Convent, Prison, Piazza
Why is it significant?
Step into the long courtyard of Le Murate and count the rows of small, regular windows above the café tables. Students with laptops, toddlers on scooters, someone carrying shopping home... and yet each of those little windows was once a cell.
Key Facts
| Place | Le Murate: Convent, Prison, Piazza |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza delle Murate, 50122 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.76920, 11.26790 |
| Part of Walk | Tripe, Truffles and Wine Windows: A Food Lover's Walk Through Florence |
| Generated | Generated |
Step into the long courtyard of Le Murate and count the rows of small, regular windows above the café tables. Students with laptops, toddlers on scooters, someone carrying shopping home... and yet each of those little windows was once a cell. You are standing inside what was, for well over a century, the most feared address in Florence.
The name tells the oldest part of the story. Le Murate means the walled-in women. In the fourteenth century a handful of devout women had themselves enclosed in a tiny hermitage on the old Rubaconte bridge, the one we now call Ponte alle Grazie, living on bread and alms passed through a small opening. Their community grew, and in the early fifteenth century they moved here, to Via Ghibellina, and became one of the richest convents in the city.
Two famous women passed through these walls. Caterina Sforza, the countess of Forlì who had stood up to Cesare Borgia, ended her days in Florence and was buried in the convent church in 1509. She left behind a manuscript of experiments, hundreds of recipes for medicines, perfumes and cosmetics. And during the siege of 1529 a little girl of the Medici family, Catherine, was kept here as a political hostage, and grew fond of the nuns. She would become queen of France, and a stubborn legend says she taught the French how to cook. Historians are sceptical... but Florentines still enjoy telling it.
In the nineteenth century the nuns were gone and the convent became the city prison. Under Fascism and the German occupation, political prisoners and partisans were locked in these cells. The prison only closed in 1985, when the inmates were moved to a new jail on the edge of town, and the buildings stood empty for years.
Then came one of the most interesting urban rescues in Florence: homes, a public square and a literary café, some of its tables set inside the old cells. Food that once came through a hatch is now served in the open air, which is a fine way to begin a walk about eating. Now head a few steps north to the iron-and-glass hall of the Sant'Ambrogio market.