Piazza Beccaria & Porta alla Croce
Why is it significant?
In the middle of a busy oval square stands a lone medieval tower-gate, marooned in traffic like a ship that forgot to leave port. Around it, the curved façades of nineteenth-century palaces follow the line of the square, all of a piece. This is Porta alla Croce, and the square is Piazza Beccaria.
Key Facts
| Place | Piazza Beccaria & Porta alla Croce |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza Cesare Beccaria, 50121 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77070, 11.27090 |
| Part of Walk | Florence, Capital of Italy: Boulevards, Exiles and the English Cemetery |
| Generated | Generated |
In the middle of a busy oval square stands a lone medieval tower-gate, marooned in traffic like a ship that forgot to leave port. Around it, the curved façades of nineteenth-century palaces follow the line of the square, all of a piece. This is Porta alla Croce, and the square is Piazza Beccaria.
The gate was built in the 1280s, at the very start of the last medieval walls, as one of the main gates on the eastern side of the city. Through it ran the road east, up the valley of the Arno towards the Apennines. When Giuseppe Poggi pulled down the walls, he kept the gate and built this elegant oval around it, so that it would stand like a monument at the end of a perspective. Exactly what he did at Porta San Gallo.
The name of the square carries one of the proudest stories in the history of Tuscany. Cesare Beccaria was a young Milanese jurist who in 1764 published a short book, On Crimes and Punishments, arguing that torture and the death penalty were both cruel and useless. It was read all over Europe. And on the thirtieth of November 1786 the grand duke of Tuscany, Peter Leopold of Lorraine, abolished the death penalty and torture. Tuscany was the first state in the modern world to do it, and every year that date is celebrated as the feast of Tuscany.
A few streets south-west of here runs a short street with a sad name, Via dei Malcontenti, the street of the unhappy. That was the road the condemned walked, accompanied by hooded brothers of a confraternity who comforted them, to the place of execution outside the walls.
So a gate of the old walls, a square of the capital years, and the name of an idea that changed European law, all in one place. Now walk back north-west towards a great green dome you have probably already glimpsed over the rooftops.