Ponte Vecchio
— the river under a street of gold.
Not only on a wall.
“The oldest bridge in Florence, and the one the war left standing. When the German army pulled back in August 1944 it mined every bridge over the Arno but this one. It crosses the river where the water runs narrowest, lined both sides with goldsmiths' windows the way it has been since 1593, when the Medici cleared out the butchers and the tanners. Above the shops runs the Vasari Corridor, the private passage the dukes used to cross the city unseen. Late in the day the gold catches the river light, and the bridge seems to hold it.
Ponte Vecchio, 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.
Ponte Vecchio crosses the Arno at the river's narrowest point in central Florence, the capital of Tuscany, linking Via Por Santa Maria on the north bank with Via de' Guicciardini on the south. It is the oldest of the city's bridges; the Romans first spanned the river here, and the present structure dates to 1345, raised after a flood swept away the previous crossing in 1333. The bridge sits inside the Historic Centre of Florence, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, a few minutes' walk south of the Uffizi and the Piazza della Signoria. It carries foot traffic only, open at any hour and free to cross.
The bridge is built as three low segmental stone arches, the central span reaching about 30 metres and the two flanking arches about 27 metres each, a flatter profile than the round Roman arch and ambitious for its day. Shops have lined both sides since the medieval period; in 1593 Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici ordered the butchers and tanners out and reserved the shopfronts for goldsmiths and jewellers, a rule the bridge still keeps. Above the eastern row runs the Vasari Corridor, the raised passage Giorgio Vasari built in 1565 for Cosimo I de' Medici so the family could move between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Palazzo Pitti without touching the street.
The Arno has shaped the bridge as much as the masons did. A flood carried off the earlier crossing in 1333, and the 1345 rebuild was set on wide, flat arches that let high water pass beneath rather than pile against it. On 4 November 1966 the river rose close to six metres in the worst flood in four centuries, tearing through the shops and washing gold into the current, yet the medieval arches held and the bridge stood. It is also the one bridge the war spared: when the German army withdrew on 4 August 1944 it mined every other span across the Arno in Florence and left Ponte Vecchio standing.