The Painter's Tower

The tower beside you pulls your gaze straight up, while down at its base there's something almost nobody looks at. Hexagonal panels run around the lowest band, showing people at work: ploughing, weaving, laying bricks, making wine, building a ship. A cathedral full of saints gets a skirting here that's filled with everyday labour.

The tower is named after Giotto, a famous painter who in the fourteenth century was appointed master builder of the cathedral and began this campanile. He died three years later, and his successors discovered that the walls had been built too thin for such a height, so they had to wrap a second shell around them.

What you see here are copies. The original panels sit a few hundred metres away in the museum behind the cathedral, where they escape the rain and the exhaust fumes of the last few centuries.

This square continues into Via dei Calzaiuoli, and halfway along, on your left, stands a square building that looks more like a warehouse than a church.