The face in the helmet

This covered colonnade was built in the fourteenth century for open-air ceremonies, and these days it works as a museum hall where you never need a ticket.

The bronze Perseus is the piece to linger in front of. Benvenuto Cellini, one of the great goldsmiths and sculptors of the Italian Renaissance, cast the statue in a single pour in the sixteenth century, and when the metal threatened to run short mid-cast he threw his pewter household goods into the furnace, at least according to his own memoirs.

The best part is on the side almost nobody looks at. We walk around the statue to the back of the helmet, and in the decoration above it there's a bearded face tucked away that gets read as a self-portrait of Cellini, hidden in the one spot where the crowd never stands.

From the loggia we head into the narrow courtyard that runs from the square down to the river.