Piazza della Repubblica, is a city square in Florence, Italy. It is on the site, first of the city's forum
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Piazza della Repubblica, is a city square in Florence, ItalyMore information:
Piazza della Repubblica, is a city square in Florence, Italy. It is on the site, first of the city's forum and then of the city's old ghetto, which was swept away during the city improvement works or Risanamento initiated during the brief period when Florence was the capital of a reunited Italy, work that also created the city's avenues and boulevards. The ghetto has disappeared from the square, and the Loggia del Pesce from the Mercato Vecchio was moved to Piazza Ciompi. Among the square's cafes, the Giubbe Rosse cafe has long been a meeting place for famous artists and writers, notably those of Futurism. Piazza della Repubblica marks the site of the forum, the centre of the Roman city. The exact present site of the Colonna dell'Abbondanza marks the intersection of the axes of the cardo (now via Roma and via Calimala) and decumanus (now via degli Strozzi, via degli Speziali, and via del Corso). Foundations of a thermae complex on the south side and a religious building were found in the 19th-century demolition of the warren of medieval streets that had encroached upon the site. Via del Campidoglio and Via delle Terme, for example, were named after the archaeological remains beneath them. The chronicler Giovanni Villani reports an oral tradition that there was a temple to Mars on or near this site, and writes that Mars was the city's patron god and so determined the city's warlike character. According to Villani a statue of Mars was in the Middle Ages placed on the predecessor to the Ponte Vecchio, along with which it was swept away in the flood of 1333. n the early medieval period the forum area was densely built over. Before the accomplishment of the fifth circle of city walls, the chroniclers record, there was no longer a single garden or pasturage in the city; there was so little space that urban development had to be not horizontal but vertical, in the case-torri (tower houses) soaring skywards.