
Loggia del Mercato Nuovo
Bronze boar fountain rubbed for luck beside a marble stone once used to shame bankrupt merchants.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo in Florence starts with the dark marble circle underfoot, the stone of shame where bankrupt merchants were once chained and whipped in front of the market. It then turns to the bronze wild boar at the loggia's edge, cast by Pietro Tacca before 1634 and rubbed to a shine by generations of travelers hoping to return to the city. Slip a coin between its jaws and see if it slides through the grate below.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Piazza della Santissima Annunziata
Renaissance square framed by porticoes, home to a foundling hospital's arcaded facade and a bronze equestrian statue.
Church & Museum of Orsanmichele
Former grain-market loggia with a jeweled Gothic tabernacle and guild-commissioned Renaissance statue niches.
il Mercato Centrale Firenze
Iron-and-glass nineteenth-century market hall with ground-floor food stalls and an upstairs artisan food court.
Loggia dei Lanzi
Open-air Gothic loggia sheltering Renaissance and classical sculptures beside a grand civic square.
Piazza della Signoria
Medieval square of Renaissance sculpture, stage for a preacher-turned-ruler's public execution.
Piazza dei Ciompi
Working-class square named for wool-carders who briefly seized power in a fourteenth-century revolt, its north end marked by a rebuilt Renaissance fish-market loggia.