page_title: Piazza della Repubblica, Florence
section_title: Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and the Ghetto
hierarchical_section_title: Piazza della Repubblica, Florence / History / Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and the Ghetto
caption_attribution_description: Colonna dell'abbondanza
context_page_description: Piazza della Repubblica is a city square in Florence, Italy. It was originally the site of the city's forum; then of its old ghetto, which was swept away during the improvement works, or Risanamento, initiated during the brief period when Florence was the capital of a reunited Italy—work that also created the city's avenues and boulevards. At that time, the Loggia del Pesce from the Mercato Vecchio was also moved to Piazza Ciompi. The square's Giubbe Rosse cafe has long been a meeting place for famous artists and writers, notably those of Futurism.
context_section_description: In the early medieval period the forum area was densely inhabited. Before the closure of the fifth circle of city walls, chroniclers record that there was no longer a single garden or pasture in the city, and that urban crowding led to tenements with ever-rising floors, including case-torri (tower houses).
  The area retained its function as a meeting place and market, which was institutionalised after 1000.  As in other Italian towns, Florence came to define public space intended for commerce, with its complementary spaces nearby, the piazza del Duomo for political affairs and a piazza del Comune, now Piazza della Signoria, for political and civil affairs. The construction of the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo near Ponte Vecchio in the 16th century led to the renaming of the market here to the Mercato Vecchio. The actual marketplace here was a long, low building in an oval rectilinear plan, with an overhanging roof to shelter the customers and the stalls placed on either side. Other shops and stalls were sited in the piazzetta.
  The area was a maze tightly packed streets and buildings in addition to the marketplace. The Mercato Vecchio had numerous shrines and churches razed in the mid-18th century. On the piazzetta del Mercato were the churches of San Tommaso, and Santa Maria in Campidoglio. There was also the shrine of Santa Maria della Tromba, rebuilt in the north angle of Palazzo dell'Arte della Lana behind the Orsanmichele. The Jewish Ghetto imposed by Cosimo I collected the city's Jews into a portion of this space. The ghetto contained both an Italian and a Spanish or Levantine synagogue.  
  The sole surviving witness to the old piazza del Mercato is the Colonna della Dovizia or Colonna dell'Abbondanza (Column of Abundance, re-positioned in 1956) on a stepped base. Once considered to be the centre of the city, this column was erected at the crossing of the cardo and decumanus of the ancient Roman city. The present column dates to 1431, and is surmounted by a grey sandstone statue of Dovizia (or  Abbondanza), by Giovan Battista Foggini, replacing an original by Donatello (found to be irreparably eroded in 1721. Today Foggini's original statue is in Palazzo della Cassa di Risparmio in via dell'Oriuolo, whilst on the column is a 1956 replica.
caption: The Column of Abundance
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