Ponte Vecchio

The bridge standing today isn't the original, or even the second. A Roman-era crossing at this narrowest point of the Arno was destroyed and rebuilt more than once, wiped out again by a flood in 1117, rebuilt, then destroyed once more in the catastrophic flood of 1333. The version tourists cross now was finished in 1345, engineered with unusually flat, wide segmental arches for its era specifically so future floodwater and debris would pass beneath more easily than through the narrower medieval arches that had failed before.

The shops lining it weren't always selling gold. They were originally occupied by butchers and fishmongers, who simply threw their waste straight into the river below — until 1593, when Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici, whose private walkway ran directly above the stalls, got tired of the smell and decreed that only goldsmiths and jewelers could trade there. That four-century-old decree still shapes, informally, what's sold on the bridge today.

Two later additions explain the rest of its reputation. The Vasari Corridor, an elevated passage built in 1565, let the Medici walk from the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti above the shops without setting foot on the street. And in August 1944, retreating German forces demolished every other bridge across the Arno in Florence but left this one standing — reportedly on direct order, though historians still dispute whether that order came from Hitler personally or from a decision made independently by the German commander Kesselring, since the surviving accounts conflict.

Getting there

Located in Florence. Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR) is about 6 km away.