Ponte Vecchio

A bridge has crossed here since Roman times. Butchers held the shops until 1593, when Grand Duke Ferdinando evicted them (the smell rose into his private corridor) in favor of goldsmiths, who remain.

The Vasari Corridor overhead was the Medici's kilometer-long private skyway, built in five months in 1565 so the family never had to walk among the governed.

In August 1944 the retreating Germans dynamited every bridge in Florence except this one, reportedly on a direct order sparing its beauty; they flattened the medieval streets at both ends instead. Look north and south from midspan and watch the architecture turn suddenly 1950s.