Piazza della Repubblica

In front of you is the most 'modern' square in central Florence, and that is exactly why it holds the city's oldest story. Right under your feet, the cardo and the decumanus, the two main streets of Florentia, crossed each other. This was the forum of the Roman colony founded in the 1st century BC.

1From forum to Mercato Vecchio

In the Middle Ages the old forum turned into the Mercato Vecchio: butchers, fishmongers, towers, churches and guild halls, all squeezed into narrow lanes. Next to it, in 1571, Cosimo I forced the city's Jews to live in a walled ghetto. The column in the middle is the only major survivor of that world: the Column of Abundance, raised around 1431 to mark the centre of the city. It was taken down during the works and put back up in 1956.

2The great demolition

When Florence was capital of Italy (1865-1871), the city set out to 'modernise'. In the 1880s the so-called Risanamento was approved: the market, the ghetto, medieval towers and churches were knocked down, and this bourgeois square went up in their place. Even then, people protested at everything that was being lost.

'The ancient centre of the city, restored from centuries of squalor to new life.'

That is the inscription on the great arch, boasting about what many Florentines felt as a loss. The square was named after Vittorio Emanuele II and became Piazza della Repubblica in 1947. Its cafés, such as Giubbe Rosse and Paszkowski, were meeting places for writers and artists in the early 20th century.

3What to look for

• The Column of Abundance, the old centre of the city.
• The inscription on the arch, on the west side of the square.
• The historic cafés under the arcades.