Ponte alle Grazie: The Bridge of the Walled-In Women

Why is it significant?

Stop halfway across and face upstream: the river widens, the hills on your right are dark with cypresses, and on the far bank a single tall stone tower stands alone among the plane trees. That green hill is where you are going.

Key Facts

Listen · 2:23

Stop halfway across and face upstream: the river widens, the hills on your right are dark with cypresses, and on the far bank a single tall stone tower stands alone among the plane trees. That green hill is where you are going. But first, look down at the bridge under your feet... because it is not what it used to be. A bridge has stood here since the 1230s. It was first called the Ponte Rubaconte, after the city magistrate who built it, and it was long and solid, with many stone arches. Chroniclers report that it survived the great flood of 1333, which swept away the Ponte Vecchio downstream. Over time little chapels were built on its piers, and one of them held an image of the Madonna delle Grazie, Our Lady of Graces. The name stuck to the whole bridge. And then there were the hermits. In the fourteenth century a few devout women had themselves walled into tiny cells on the bridge, living on alms passed through a window, praying over the water day and night. Florentines called them the Murate, the walled-in women. Eventually they moved to a proper convent in the city, which kept the name. Centuries later that convent became a prison, and today it is a cultural centre. The houses and chapels were cleared in the nineteenth century to widen the road. Then, on the night of the 3rd to the 4th of August 1944, German troops blew up the bridge along with all the others except the Ponte Vecchio. The plain modern bridge you are standing on replaced it after the war, the result of an architectural competition. Florentines have argued ever since about whether it is honest or just dull. Now look at the hills again. Everything on this walk is up there: a garden of wisteria, a fortress, olive groves inside the city walls and a church covered in green and white marble. Walk off the bridge onto the Oltrarno bank and into the little square straight ahead, Piazza de' Mozzi.