Piazza della Signoria, Florence


	Piazza della Signoria The center of Florentine politics since the Middle Ages, the Piazza della Signoria remains even today the site of political speeches and demonstrations, as well as a gathering spot for Florentines and tourists alike. Some of the politics of the past can be read in the statuary here, from the republican ideals expressed in Michelangelo's David (a copy stands here; the original is under cover in the Accademia), slayer of tyrants, to the later and imperial portrait of Grand Duke Cosimo I in Giambologna's equestrian statue (1594). It was Cosimo I who commissioned the Neptune Fountain in an attempt to create some order in the irregularly shaped piazza. The sculpture continues in the Loggia dei Lanzi, the graceful structure on the south side of the piazza that exhibits, in its left arch, Benvenuto Cellini's confident bronze figure of Perseus (1545), and, in its right arch, a copy of Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines (original in the Accademia). Excavations beneath the piazza in recent years revealed not just earlier medieval buildings but also a Roman complex from the 1st century AD. Address: Piazza della Signoria Florence Italy