Ponte Vecchio

This guide to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence starts on the night of August 4, 1944, as retreating German troops blow up every bridge across the Arno, one after another. It follows why this one alone was left standing, weighing the rival accounts — a supposed order from Hitler himself, who had admired the view from here in 1938, against the quieter account of a German consul named Gerhard Wolf. Along the way it traces the goldsmiths who have worked in the bridge's shops since the 1590s and the private passage built above them for the Medici.