Savonarola's Stone

Somewhere between the Neptune Fountain and the front of the town hall, a round plaque lies in the pavement with a text running around it that most feet simply tread over, and this is the spot where Girolamo Savonarola died.

Through the 1490s, this Dominican friar preached against the luxury of the wealthy, and once the Medici, the family that effectively ruled Florence, were driven out, he took the city into his own hands. He had citizens hand over their mirrors, their playing cards, their perfumes and paintings, and burn them on this square, the bonfire of the vanities, and some artists even brought their own work to it.

Four years on, the mood turned. The pope excommunicated him, the city had him tortured, and in May 1498 he was hanged and burned less than a hundred metres from his own pyres. His ashes were thrown into the Arno to keep anyone from venerating his remains. Even now, every May, flowers appear on the stone.

The panel that goes with this story was painted that same year, and it shows the square where you're standing, with the gallows and the fire in front of it and the crowd gathered round. The buildings in it are the same ones you see now, right down to the tower of the town hall and the arches of the loggia on the south side.

The David standing here is a copy in the original spot; the original moved to a museum in the nineteenth century and gets its full story in our walk about Michelangelo.

Beneath the tower, behind the row of statues, is the entrance to the town hall.