Piazza della Signoria
— the colour bronze gets when it stays outside.
Not only on a wall.
“The L-shaped civic square in the old centre of Florence, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The Loggia dei Lanzi holds a row of statues that have stood in open air for almost five hundred years; Cellini's Perseus is among them. There are pigeons, the cobbles, the long line for the Uffizi off the south corner, and a small marble disc set into the ground where the friar Savonarola was burned in 1498. Florence has kept the room intact.
Piazza della Signoria, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Piazza della Signoria is the civic square at the political centre of Florence, in the Tuscan region of central Italy. The piazza takes its L-shaped footprint from the Palazzo Vecchio, whose 94-metre Torre di Arnolfo rises along the east side; the Uffizi Gallery and the Arno River lie just to the south, the Duomo about 500 metres to the north. The square has held its civic role since the late 13th century, when Florence cleared the tower-houses of the Uberti family to lay out a public meeting ground for the Republic. Excavations beneath the cobbles in the 1980s exposed Roman baths and the remains of the medieval church of San Romolo, layered under the present surface.
The piazza functions as an open-air sculpture gallery. The Loggia dei Lanzi, built 1376–1382 by Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti, shelters Benvenuto Cellini's bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa, unveiled in 1554, and Giambologna's marble Rape of the Sabine Women (1583), among others. Bartolomeo Ammannati's Fontana del Nettuno was completed in 1565; Giambologna's equestrian Cosimo I in 1594. A copy of Michelangelo's David has stood at the Palazzo Vecchio entrance since 1910, after the original was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia in 1873. Donatello's Marzocco lion is here in copy, the original in the Bargello.
The piazza itself is open ground and free to enter at any hour. The Palazzo Vecchio runs as a city museum with a paid entry; its courtyards and the climb of the Torre di Arnolfo are normally ticketed. A small marble disc near the centre of the square marks the place where Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and burned on 23 May 1498; Florentines still scatter petals on the spot on the anniversary. The Uffizi entrance is across the loggia on the south side; advance reservations are required during the high season. Early morning, before the gallery queues form, is when the bronze in the Loggia dei Lanzi reads cleanest in raking light.