VECCHIO BRIDGE

Like the Rialto in Venice, Florence has its Ponte Vecchio (literally Old Bridge)! The origins of this emblematic monument of the Tuscan capital date back to 120 AD, when it allowed the passage of the Via Cassia, an ancient Roman road, on the Arno. The high floods of the river regularly destroyed the structure, until the construction in 1345 of a real stone bridge with three arches. This remodelling allowed the installation of several stalls: butchers, fishmongers and tanners, who took advantage of the flow into the Arno for hygiene reasons.

Moreover, the secret passage mentioned by Dan Brown in Inferno really exists! A protected and covered corridor, the Vasari corridor (corridoio Vasariano), which overlooks one of the rows of shops on the hillside, allowed the Medicis to discreetly leave the Palazzo Vecchio to join the Palazzo Pitti, without mixing with the population, sometimes agitated, and walk in the dry! Members of the ducal family could thus move from one side of the city to the other without any danger, at a time when the risk of attack was constant. At the end of the 16th century, the latter, no longer able to stand the smell of the shops that occupied the bridge, asked that they be replaced by noble art shops, such as jewellers, jewellers or goldsmiths. For the anecdote, the word "bankruptcy" would come from the rental of these stalls: if a trader could not pay the rent, his bench ("banca") was broken ("rotta").

The structure, with a main span of thirty metres, is lined with jewellery shops, whose back rooms extend beyond the edges of the bridge, overlooking the river, supported by long wooden beams, called sporti. The Ponte Vecchio is one of the few medieval bridges still standing to preserve the stepped houses built within it. In the middle stands the bust of Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), master of Florentine silversmithing, and inaugurated on the wedding day of Ferdinand I de Medicis' son. Please note that the shops are generally open from Monday to Saturday, from 9am to 7pm. Pedestrian (totally accessible to people with reduced mobility), the bridge links the Santo Spirito district to San Giovanni, and is crammed with tourists, musicians, portraitists and other street artists. Florence's oldest bridge, now a romantic symbol of the Tuscan capital, enjoys a very lively atmosphere all year round, a real place to live as in the past.