Italy · Old Town
Florence
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Florence is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Ponte Vecchio 1,500 points
The one bridge in this town with a whole street built on top of it. Shops hang out over the water on timber brackets, tight on both sides, so you can be halfway over and never see the river at all. Somebody looked at all that foot traffic and thought: rent. There is a single gap in the middle where the view is let back in.
Basilica di Santa Croce 500 points
One end of the widest flat square on this side of the map, with the low benches all facing the wrong way, which I enjoy. The coloured front is a latecomer, put on in the 1800s over a wall that had stood bare for ages. Stand well back to take it in. Then look down: this is the lowest corner of the centre, and the walls about here remember how high the water once got.
Galleria dell'Accademia 500 points
A door on Via Ricasoli with a queue outside it, and the queue is the tell. Book ahead or turn up at opening, because this is the one halt on the walk where the best of it is kept indoors and everybody in that line has come for exactly one thing. I will be out on the kerb. I have the time.
Palazzo Pitti 500 points
The far end of the walk, over the water and then up. The whole front is one enormous slab of rough-cut stone, and the square in front of it slopes away like a ramp, so the thing leans over you while you arrive. Come at it up the Sdrucciolo dei Pitti if you would rather arrive out of breath. I would.
Belvedere sull'Arno 250 points
A parapet on the Lungarno Torrigiani, at about the height a person wants to lean. Stop and turn to face the water: the far bank stacks the whole city up at once, roof over roof over roof. Late in the afternoon the stone on that side goes orange. I lean here too. It is what a parapet is for.
Campanile di Giotto 250 points
A tower standing on its own, in bands of white, green and pink marble, like something laid out on a counter. The other climb next door has the long queue. This one has the view of it. Go up here and the dome is the thing you are looking at, not the thing you are standing on.
Piazza della Signoria 250 points
The city's front room, with something strange under the paving. A dig here between 1974 and 1987 turned up a large Roman bath complex and a dye works, with medieval houses set straight on top of them. Above, the roofed loggia along one side is open to the lane and costs nothing to walk into. Everything worth looking at on this square is out in the weather on purpose.
Piazza Santa Maria Novella 250 points
A wide open rectangle, and this town does not hand those out often. The church shutting the top end wears a front of green and white geometry that was already old before it was done. Sit on the low wall along one flank and look up the length of it. Two things are set out there that are not figures, and I want you to find them yourself.
Name origin
Why it is called Florence.
Florence is a compliment that stuck. The Roman name was Florentia, built on florens, florentis: flourishing, thriving, doing nicely. It was handed over as a wish rather than a description, and the place spent two thousand years growing into it. Firenze comes out of the locative Florentiae, worn down in local mouths, and turns up written that way around the middle of the 13th century. Nobody has ever called me flourishing. Cobbled, yes, and I take that as praise.
Sources: www.lanazione.it
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
A road and two rivers. The Via Cassia came through here, and here is where the Mugnone then ran into the Arno, so the trade to and from Rome, Faenza, Lucca and Pisa all piled up in one spot. Somebody put a town where the carts already had to slow down. The Mugnone has since been moved off. The road has not, and it is still under your feet.
Sources: www.treccani.it, www.treccani.it
Why then
When the first stone went down.
This started as a wall with a market inside it. The place took the name Florentia and was a Roman municipium first, sharing its rites with Fiesole up the hill; then Caesar settled a colony here and walled it, a circuit of two thousand metres. That circuit is the smallest version of this level. Everything else on the map grew outward from that one square bite.
Sources: www.treccani.it, www.treccani.it
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1138–1530
Nobody in particular, and then a committee. The first consuls turn up in 1138. In 1193 a podestà takes over, brought in as a guarantee that the administration would be impartial. From 1282 the guilds run the government themselves through the priorato, and the Ordinamenti di giustizia of 1295 settled it: merchants and bankers held the city, and the old noble houses were shut out of office. Every trade on this map got a street out of that arrangement, and I have eaten all of them.
Sources: www.treccani.it
- 1530–1737
The Medici, out in the open. The family had been running the city from behind the constitution since 1434, keeping every republican form in place and the decisions to itself. In 1530 the pretending stopped: this became a duchy, and in 1569 its duke was made grand duke of Tuscany. A city that had owned a state turned into the head town of one. The line ran out in 1737 with Gian Gastone, and there was nobody to come after him.
Sources: www.treccani.it
- 1737–1860
Lorraine, by paperwork. When the Medici line ended, the grand duchy was assigned to Francis Stephen of Lorraine as Europe tidied up the Polish succession, and the new administration paid down the public debt. Under Peter Leopold, 1765 to 1790, marshland was drained and smallholdings were encouraged; under Leopold II from 1824 the city got a free press and a written statute. Then in 1860 Tuscany joined the kingdom of Sardinia and the grand duchy was finished.
Sources: www.treccani.it
- 1860–
Italy. Since 1860 the decisions about this place have been taken by a national government instead of a grand duke, and today it governs its own region: a comune of 102 square kilometres, with something like 367,000 people in it. The walled square the Romans left is a small fraction of all that. It is also the only part you can finish in an afternoon, which is why the level stops where it stops.
Sources: www.treccani.it
The emblem
What the shield means.
A red lily, opened out with its pistils showing, on a silver field. Only it is not really a lily. The flower behind it is the white iris that grows all over the country round here, and the shield is the city's own name in bloom: Florentia means flourishing. Until 1251 the colours ran the other way, white on red. Of everything a city could paint on a shield, a flower is the most edible.
Sources: it.wikipedia.org, www.pressandarcheos.com
Emblem: Original artwork for Cobble Gobble — no third-party source
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The Roman plan never left. The lanes in the centre still hold the orientation of Florentia's own: the forum is the present-day Piazza della Repubblica, the decumanus runs out along Via degli Strozzi and Via del Corso, and the line of the first ring of walls is traced, in broad strokes, by Via dei Tornabuoni, Via dei Cerretani and Via del Proconsolo. Walk those three and you are eating a fence that came down a long time ago.
Sources: www.treccani.it, www.treccani.it
In 1172 the city threw up a new ring of walls that took in more than twice the old area and, for the first time, reached over onto the left bank of the Arno. Once the far side was inside, one bridge was not enough. Ponte alla Carraia followed in 1220, Ponte alle Grazie in 1237, Ponte a Santa Trinita in 1252. Two of those are still your way over and back on this level. That is how a level gets a second half.
Sources: www.treccani.it, www.treccani.it
Orsanmichele was a grain market before it was a church. The loggia went up between 1337 and 1404, and when the grain moved out the guilds moved in: fourteen figures of the guilds' patron saints stand in niches around the outside of it, one trade at a time. It is the only building I know of that is also a list of jobs. Via Orsanmichele runs along one flank of it, so you will pass under the whole list.
Sources: www.treccani.it
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Borgo
- A street that ran out through a gate of the old wall, into the suburb it served, and kept the name after the wall went. Borgo degli Albizi, Borgo Ognissanti, Borgo Santi Apostoli, Borgo San Iacopo, Borgo San Lorenzo, Borgo Santa Croce, Borgo de' Greci. Seven roads, and every one of them was the way out.
- Chiasso
- A slot between two houses that counts as a street anyway. Chiasso del Buco, Chiasso Cornino, Chiasso delle Misure, Chiasso dei Baroncelli, Chiasso di Manetto. Eleven of them in this level. I fit. A delivery van does not.
- Vicolo
- The same idea one size up: a small lane, usually named after whatever was made or sold along it. Vicolo dell'Oro, Vicolo della Seta, Vicolo del Ferro, Vicolo dell'Onestà. Gold, silk, iron and honesty, in that order.
- Lungarno
- Along the Arno. These are the long ones by the water: Lungarno Torrigiani, Lungarno Corsini, Lungarno degli Acciaioli, Lungarno degli Archibusieri, Lungarno delle Grazie. Flat, straight, and the only place in the level where you can see the sky all the way down a street.
- Canto
- A corner, and here a corner is important enough to be its own address. Canto de' Carnesecchi, Canto di Croce Rossa, Via del Canto Rivolto, Via del Canto de' Nelli. When a city names its corners, it is telling you how people give directions.
- Volta
- A vault: a stretch of street that runs under a building instead of past it. Volta dei Mercanti, Volta dei Tintori, Volta di San Piero. Roofed streets are the best texture in any city and there are only three here.
- -ai, -aiuoli
- The plural of a trade, used as a street name. Via dei Calzaiuoli were the hose-makers, Corso dei Tintori the dyers, Via dei Saponai the soap-makers, Via dei Cimatori the cloth-shearers, Via delle Farine the flour. Pellicceria is the furriers' trade, and it does not even bother with a Via.
The size of it
One Old Town, measured.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 265streets
- 2,130dots
- 33.2km of street
- 41.9km on foot
- 12.0hours at a stroll
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.