Piazza Santo Spirito: The Living Room of the Oltrarno
Why is it significant?
Find a spot under the trees by the fountain and look around you: a long, sloping square, plane trees, benches, a few market stalls, and at the far end a strange, blank cream-coloured wall where a church facade ought to be. Nothing here is dressed up for visitors.
Key Facts
| Place | Piazza Santo Spirito: The Living Room of the Oltrarno |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza Santo Spirito, 50125 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.76630, 11.24740 |
| Part of Walk | Florence Across the Arno: Oltrarno Artisans, Santo Spirito & San Frediano |
| Generated | Generated |
Find a spot under the trees by the fountain and look around you: a long, sloping square, plane trees, benches, a few market stalls, and at the far end a strange, blank cream-coloured wall where a church facade ought to be. Nothing here is dressed up for visitors. That is exactly why Florentines love it.
Piazza Santo Spirito is the living room of the Oltrarno. In the morning there are stalls of fruit and vegetables, and old men argue on the benches. Around midday the cafés fill with students. And on summer evenings the whole square becomes one big terrace, crowded until long after midnight, with people sitting on the church steps and on the rim of the fountain.
Behind you, at the south end, look for the palace with an open loggia at the very top, under the roof. That is Palazzo Guadagni, built at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and that rooftop loggia, called an altana, was a novelty then. It was a place to dry clothes, to catch the breeze in August, and above all to be seen enjoying the view. Within a generation half the palaces of Florence had copied it.
The neighbourhood has always had a proud, slightly rebellious character. In the Calcio Storico, the brutal costumed football played every June in Piazza Santa Croce, the four teams belong to the four historic quarters of the city, and Santo Spirito plays in white. Bianchi, the Whites. Ask anyone on these benches who will win this year, and you will get an answer at length.
There is another side to the square's history. Like much of the low-lying Oltrarno, the neighbourhood was flooded in 1966, and it has gone through hard years since, too. Today the challenge is gentler: how to stay a real neighbourhood with so many visitors. Now walk up to that blank wall at the top of the square. Behind it is one of the purest buildings of the Renaissance.