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.
This guide to Piazza dei Ciompi in Florence centers on July 22, 1378, when a wool carder named Michele di Lando was handed a banner outside the town hall and told he was now running the city. It traces who the ciompi were, the lowest tier of Florence's wool trade, and how thousands of them stormed the guild leaders' palace and briefly put one of their own in charge of the government. The guide also follows the square's Renaissance fish-market loggia, moved and rebuilt more than once, and the flea market that later gave this corner its scrappy character.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.