Via de’ Calzaiuoli

This is the heart of the historical center of di Florence: it runs from Piazza della Signoria to Piazza Duomo. The name comes from the calzolai, the artisan and merchants of the canvas footwear with soles that were so popular among the fashionable young people in Florence from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. But already in the Middle Ages, the street was the center of the city business district. Overlooking this street were monuments of the importance of Orsanmichele, the thirteenth-century grain silo that was later transformed into a church, the most Florentine monument in Florence, as it has been called, because of its mixed character, both civil and religious. Over the centuries, the street, made into a pedestrian thoroughfare and closed off to cars, has preserved its original quality as a shopping center, becoming an obligatory passage for city shopping and tourism, in a cheerful but also chaotic melting pot of styles that range from youthful trend shops to souvenir shops and deluxe jewelers.