San Niccolò

This guide to San Niccolò in Florence follows the fate of the six gate-towers that once ringed the city, and the winter of 1529, when an imperial army besieged Florence and five of those towers were stripped of their crowns so cannon could be mounted on the walls. San Niccolò alone still wears its original crown. Look for the plaque on the church nearby marking the waterline of a flood that struck this low-lying quarter centuries later, in 1966.