Cher in Florence

Everyone who lives in Florence, or is here for an extended stay, has a piazza.

It’s the piazza that you have to visit after being away, the piazza that you show off to your visiting friends, the piazza that feels like home. It’s hard to explain what it is that pulls us to a particular one,* but I’ll try.

It usually starts out as a practical thing. For instance, with me, I had to pass through Piazza della Repubblica nearly every day on my first stay in Florence three years ago because my pensione was west of the city center. I thought of it as a “throughway” piazza, because it’s quite plain and I’d usually dodge businessmen on bikes on their way to work. It doesn’t have any ornate sculptures of David or Neptune, as with Piazza della Signoria; it isn’t bordered by a beautiful Franciscan basilica that holds the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo, as with Piazza di Santa Croce. I’d heard that most Italians don’t even like Piazza della Repubblica because it is so new (late 19th century) and building it required the destruction of medieval streets, buildings, churches, and even ancient ruins. Beauty wasn’t the point of the piazza; it was built to commemorate the reunification of Italy. Tour groups do not linger here.

But as with all rituals, if you do them often enough, you warm to them. A couple of weeks into that first trip, instead of racing through to get to the cafes on via Corso or to taking a right to walk to Ponte Vecchio, I’d sit for a spell on the piazza’s only column, “Abundance.”

I’d just sit there, doing absolutely nothing, and I’d watch. Near the booths where they sell soccer jerseys, a woman would sing opera and a crowd would quickly gather, under the arches a Romanian band would set up their amps, spritely music would float over from the spinning red and gold carousel. The piazza is a theater. After several sits, I soon realized that the column was the only place in Florence I could sit still and just be. I didn’t have to buy an expensive coffee, I didn’t have to scurry out of the way. It was a rare, singular feeling, and I was in.

More than just a way to relax, sitting at that column became a kind of meditation, and it still is. On this visit, I spent the first couple of weeks running around with friends, going to dinner parties, taking the train to Pontassieve, eating out a lot; so it wasn’t until last week that I finally got a chance to pay a proper visit to my piazza.

I hadn’t planned it; I was shopping and doing errands around there when I realized that I had nothing to do and no one to see. It was almost sunset. I bought a gelato and sat down. Within a few minutes, a woman in the southeast corner of the square started singing an aria, the sun slowly burnt the sky behind the arch, the colors of the carousel brightened–I was instantly in and watching.

I think it must be the plainness of Piazza della Repubblica that invites people to use it as a spontaneous stage. I also think that because I am sitting still, I can watch the theater unfold with full attention.

This is why Piazza della Repubblica is my piazza.

*I don’t know if there is such a thing as past lives; I have some friends who believe in it. All I will say is that I am a writer drawn to Piazza della Repubblica, and it just so happens that in the early part of the 20th century, writers and artists flocked to this piazza to dine and drink at Giubbe Rosse, a restaurant still on the square. Then again, the piazza was once a Jewish ghetto and a popular market, so who knows.