Word: signoria
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Piazza della Signoria -- one of the most beautiful squares in the world -- is, alas, in a state of upheaval. We know that you will be disappointed and would like to offer you all our apologies...
Piazza della Signoria is in a state of upheaval these days. The piazza that has been the center of Florentine life since before Medici times, the space chosen by Michelangelo for his exquisite statue David, has been ripped up and fenced in. The current David, a copy, stands forlornly in front of a partially scaffolded Palazzo Vecchio. Cosimo I, the young Medici ruler who sits mid- square atop his bronze horse, gazes down on an ugly, corrugated plastic roof covering a third of the square...
...Vanities during Carnival in Florence in 1497. Thousands of the Florentine children who were Savonarola's followers went through the city collecting what they deemed to be lewd books, as well as pictures, lutes, playing cards, mirrors and other vanities, and piled them in the great Piazza della Signoria of Florence. The pyramid of offending objects rose 60 feet high, and went up in flames. One year later Savonarola had a political quarrel with Pope Alexander VI, was excommunicated, tried and hanged. His body was burned at the stake. Savonarola went up in smoke...
Michelangelo's next challenge was to produce a fresco in the huge new hall of the Palazzo della Signoria, to match a similar fresco to be done by his great rival, Leonardo da Vinci. Though neither painting was ever finished, the cartoons for them became, as Benvenuto Cellini recorded, "so long as they remained intact ... the school of the world"; Michelangelo's surviving sketch for a bathing soldier demonstrates...
...from an Irwin Shaw short story, has kept the plot simple, concentrating on nuance of character and atmosphere. Taylor (Sam Waterston) and Bert (Robie Porter) are two decidedly American college boys touring Europe during the summer in a beat-up Peugeot. One morning in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, Taylor meets a bored and footloose English girl named Marty (Charlotte Rampling) who is alone on holiday and obviously receptive to some attractive company. She takes the boys to visit some jaded Italian friends; they respond by inviting her along on the remainder of their trip...