Piazza della Repubblica: Caffè Gilli & Giubbe Rosse

Why is it significant?

Stand by the old carousel and turn slowly round. Big arcades, a triumphal arch, wide pavements, café terraces... it looks more like Turin or Paris than like the rest of Florence, and that is exactly the point.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand by the old carousel and turn slowly round. Big arcades, a triumphal arch, wide pavements, café terraces... it looks more like Turin or Paris than like the rest of Florence, and that is exactly the point.

Under your feet lies the heart of Roman Florentia, where its two main streets crossed, and the stone column with the statue of Abundance marks that spot. For centuries this was the Mercato Vecchio, a maze of butchers, poulterers, fishmongers and taverns, and next to it the walled Jewish ghetto. In the 1880s and 1890s the whole quarter was demolished. The inscription on the arch boasts that the ancient centre was restored from centuries of squalor to new life. Many Florentines, then and now, would call it a loss.

Caffè Gilli is older than the square itself. It was founded in 1733 by a family from Switzerland as a shop of sweet breads, and moved here once the new buildings went up. Do as Florentines do: stand at the bar, order a coffee, drink it in a few sips, and point at a pastry. In winter, the thick hot chocolate is close to a pudding.

Across the square is the Caffè Giubbe Rosse, the Red Jackets, opened in the 1890s by German brothers whose waiters wore red jackets in the Viennese style. It is said that Florentines could not pronounce the owners' German name, so they named the place after the jackets. It became the living room of the Florentine avant-garde. In 1911, the story goes, Futurists from Milan came down by train to answer a bad review of their exhibition with their fists, right at these tables. Within two years, the former enemies were writing for the same magazine.

So the square tells you two things about Florence: it can be ruthless with its past, and it never stops arguing over a cup of coffee. Now leave by the south-west corner into Via Porta Rossa, to a medieval house that kept its kitchen on the top floor.