About This Location
Piazza Santa Trinita is a compact square, but it sits at a key junction - right by the Arno and the start of Via de’ Tornabuoni, one of Florence’s best-known shopping streets. The atmosphere shifts quickly here: a few steps one way and it is the river, a few steps the other and it is polished storefronts and historic palazzi. The centerpiece is the Colonna della Giustizia, the Column of Justice. It is not “local” stone at all - it is an ancient Roman column that originally stood at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, later given to Cosimo I de’ Medici. Getting it to Florence was a serious engineering project: it moved slowly to the Tiber, went by sea, then came up through Tuscany and was hauled overland to the city. Look up to the statue on top. It is made of purple porphyry, one of the hardest stones to carve, and it represents Justice. The column’s meaning changed over time, but it ended up as a public Medici message: power presented as “just rule,” set right in the middle of daily city traffic. One side of the square is dominated by Palazzo Spini Feroni, a fortress-like Gothic palace with a heavy stone face and a crenellated top. It was commissioned in 1289 by Geri Spini, and it still feels like a building made for an age when rich families had to think about defense. In the 1930s it was bought by Salvatore Ferragamo, and today the Ferragamo Museum is housed inside the palazzo. Across from it is the church that gives the piazza its name, Santa Trinita. Inside is the Sassetti Chapel, famous for Domenico Ghirlandaio’s frescoes of the life of Saint Francis, painted in the 1480s for the banker Francesco Sassetti. It is an easy place to miss if the focus stays outside, but it is one of the richest small chapel experiences in Florence. Standing in this spot, the nearby scene is clear and very “Florence”: the column in the center, the strong block of Palazzo Spini Feroni, the church façade nearby, and the pull of Via de’ Tornabuoni leading away with its shop windows and elegant street life.