Piazzale Michelangelo

Piazzale Michelangelo was the centrepiece of architect Giuseppe Poggi's ambitious 1860s redevelopment of Florence's old defensive walls into a ring of tree-lined boulevards, undertaken during the brief years when the city served as capital of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. Poggi chose this natural terrace on the hill of San Miniato specifically because of the view it commanded back across the Arno toward the Duomo and Palazzo Vecchio, and the square opened to the public in 1869.

At its centre stands a monument to the man the square is named for: a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David, cast by Clemente Papi in 1873, surrounded by bronze reproductions of the sculptor's four Medici Chapel allegories — Dawn, Dusk, Day and Night. Bronze copies were used deliberately, since the marble originals could never have survived permanently outdoors.

Poggi's original plan was more ambitious still: he intended the neoclassical loggia overlooking the square to house a full museum dedicated to Michelangelo, with casts of his major works displayed inside. City authorities scrapped the idea before it was finished, and in 1871 the building was handed over to a café instead — the same role it still plays today.

Every statue on view in the square is a copy for the same conservation reason: keeping four-hundred-year-old marble outdoors, exposed to Florence's weather year-round, would have destroyed it within decades.