Piazza di Santa Croce

This guide to the Piazza di Santa Croce in Florence returns to February 1530, when the city, besieged by Emperor Charles V's army, staged a defiant game of calcio storico -- a brutal ancestor of soccer -- in plain sight of the enemy, with musicians on the basilica roof to make sure they heard the celebration. It traces how fifty-four of Florence's proudest nobles played it out on a sand pitch laid across this square, a tradition four neighborhoods still revive every June. Look for the two marble discs set into the paving that still mark out the old pitch.