Florence's living room

Florence's Piazza della Signoria

In Italy, all roads lead to Rome, but in Florence all roads lead to the elegant Piazza della Signoria—the cultural, political, and social heart of the city since the 14th century. It's a lively, statue-studded square lined with cafés and home to the fortresslike Palazzo Vecchio, off which stretches the "U" of the Uffizi Galleries, Florence's great art museum.

The square is dominated by an imposing rough-hewn fortress, the late 13th-century Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), still Florence's city hall. Its severe Gothic style, replete with crenellations and battlements, is highlighted by a 308-foot campanile that was a supreme feat of engineering in its day.

A small disk in the ground in front of the piazza's enormous (and controversial) Neptune Fountain (Ammanati, 1576) marks the spot where religious fundamentalist Savonarola was hanged and then burned at the stake for heresy in 1498—a few years after inciting the original "bonfires of the vanities" while ruling the city during the Medici's temporary exile from Florence (even Botticelli got caught up in the fervor and is said to have tossed in a painting to fuel the flames).

The raised platform-like porch before the Palazzo Vecchio—the platform, from which orators once addressed the crowds in piazza, is called the aringaria, which is where we got our word "harague"—is lined with statues. Flanking the life-size copy of Michelangelo's David (the original is in the Accademia) are copies of Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (original in the musuem inside) and the Marzocco (original in the Bargello), the heraldic lion of Florence. Unfortunately placed next to David's anatomical perfection, on teh other side of the stone steps, is Baccio Bandelli's Heracles (1534), which comes across looking like the "sack of melons" Cellini described it to be.

On the south side of Piazza della Signoria—just to teh right of the long U of the Uffizi—is the 14th-century Loggia dei Lanzi (also called Loggia della Signoria or sometimes, after its architect, Loggia di Orcagna), Florence's most captivating outdoor sculpture gallery (you might recognize it as the site where Lucy swooned after witnessing a murder in Room with a View).

The loggia has finally been freed of its scaffolding, and the loggia is open to visitors for the first time in decades. Benvenuto Cellini's rare 1545 work Perseus was returned here in 2000 after a four-year (and sorely needed) restoration. Giambologna's important Rape of the Sabine is a three-dimensional study in Mannerism, and stands alongside his Hercules Slaying the Centaurand Duke Cosimo de' Medici. The wallflower statues standing against the back are ancient Roman originals.