Via dell’Inferno and Via del Purgatorio intersect a stone’s throw from Santa Maria Novella. If you pass by them for the first time, you usually immediately think of Dante. The idea is understandable: in the city of the Supreme Poet, two streets with those names seem like an almost too-obvious homage! Their true origin is much more earthly, and I’ll tell you more about it later.
In Florence, street names were rarely chosen deliberately. Many became fixed over the centuries through use, because they were the simplest way to describe a place: what the street looked like, who lived there, what profession was practiced there, or what had happened there. When the City Council compiled the new street directory in 1875, many of those names had already been there for centuries. The new names were added to those of the old street directory.
Reading the plaques carefully is a way to get to know the historic center without adding a single stop to your itinerary. The streets are the ones you walk between museums anyway, and the answer to the name, very often, is written right on the corner.
In Florence a downhill road is called sdrucciolo
Even before the name, in Florence, the word that precedes it matters. Beyond the streets, there are the villages, the canti, the chiassi, the coasts, the vaults, and the sdruccioli. Each of these words describes the shape of the street or the part of the city where it is located.
The villages, for example, originated as streets outside the oldest walls, along the main roads leading out of the city. Borgo Ognissanti, Borgo San Frediano, and Borgo Pinti are now right in the center, but their names still recall the time when the city ended there.
The costa is an uphill road and anyone who has traveled from Costa San Giorgio to Forte Belvedere on a July day knows well why no one has ever called it a day.
The corner is a corner, a crossroads which was given the name of the most prominent family who lived there. Then there are the volte, the covered passages that cross a building under an arch, and the chiassi, which I will tell you about shortly.
Taken together, these words form a sort of small vocabulary of the city that Florentines still use today without realizing it, and which offers those coming from outside the city the first clue to finding their way around the alleys of the center.
The Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti descends from the square to Via Maggio
Of all the words, the one that makes non-Tuscans smile the most is slip, from the verb sdrucciolare, meaning to slide. The Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti is the short paved slope that leads from Piazza de’ Pitti to Via Maggio, and the name couldn’t be more accurate: on rainy days, on the wet stone, you’ll immediately understand where it comes from!
The name of the street is linked to that of the Pitti family, the bankers who in the 15th century built the large palace behind you, later purchased by the Medici in the mid-16th century. Even today, the Sdrucciolo is the shortest connection between the palace and the Santo Spirito neighborhood, one of the liveliest in the Oltrarno.
If you’re leaving Palazzo Pitti and want to reach Santo Spirito, this is also the easiest route. Go down the slip road, cross Via Maggio, and continue along Via de’ Michelozzi to the square, passing a few shops and a couple of places to stop for a coffee.
The chiassi were the narrowest alleys in the city
The noise is a narrow alley, sometimes a little wider than a person, connecting two more important roads. Old dictionaries were not kind: they described it as a passage where all kinds of rubbish ended up. And for a long time, that was indeed the case. Today, fortunately, the alleys are clean and often quite picturesque, but the name has stuck.
One of the best known is the Chiasso de’ Baroncelli, which starts from Via Lambertesca and ends in Piazza della Signoria. It takes its name from the Baroncelli, a family of merchants and bankers who owned houses and properties in this area. Countless people pass by every day on their way to the Uffizi, and almost no one notices they’re walking through a noisy area!
If you want to experience the effect, take it from Via Lambertesca: after a few meters of shade you suddenly find yourself in the square, with Palazzo Vecchio in front of you.
The Canto dei Bischeri gave Florence its favorite insult
At the corner between Piazza del Duomo and Via dell’Oriuolo, behind the apse of the cathedral, there is a crossroads that bears one of the names most loved by the Florentines: the Song of the Bischeri. Anyone who’s Tuscan is already smiling. Anyone who isn’t should know that in Florence, “bischero” is the term used, with more or less affection, for someone who behaves foolishly.
At the end of the thirteenth century they had here houses and shops of the Bischeri family, a rich and respected family which over time gave the Republic priors and gonfalonieri.
The trouble began around 1294, when it was decided to build a new cathedral on the site of the old Santa Reparata. The Bischeri family’s properties were located right on the construction site, and the municipality offered them a hefty sum to buy them. They refused once, then again, and again, believing they could get a better price.
According to the most widespread tale, a fire broke out one night, destroying everything, and the family was left homeless and without a florin. Other, less romantic versions speak of an expropriation paid far less than the initial offer. In any case, since then, the fool has become someone who thinks he’s being clever and ends up losing out.
Linguists have little faith in this etymology. The word likely has a different origin. However, the story also has a happy ending. According to tradition, the descendants of the Bischeri family left Florence, made their fortune abroad, and returned centuries later with a new and decidedly more auspicious surname: Guadagni. The 17th-century palazzo that now occupies the corner bears that very name.
Via dell’Inferno owes its name to the sign of an inn
Let’s return to the initial question. Via dell’Inferno is a narrow street in the Santa Maria Novella neighborhood, a few steps from Palazzo Rucellai, which begins at Via del Purgatorio and ends at Via della Vigna Nuova. A little further on, near the Church of the Holy Apostles, is Piazza del Limbo: three names from the afterlife concentrated in a few hundred meters, enough to suggest a tribute to Dante.
The most popular explanation is much more prosaic. In this area there was a tavern called Hell, with a devil painted on the sign, and the name eventually became the street name. Some even say there was a rivalry between neighboring establishments, with customers torn between one and the other… in Purgatory, precisely. There are no documents to confirm this second version, but Florentines are happy to tell it, and I agree.
Even Via del Purgatorio, after all, has not always been called that: in the past it was known as Old Parione. The current name came later, most likely due to its proximity to Hell.
Limbo Square has a more melancholy history. This was the site of a small cemetery where children who died before being baptized were buried. According to the doctrine of the time, they could not rest in consecrated ground and ended up, in fact, in limbo. Today, it’s a quiet little square in front of the Holy Apostles, one of the city’s oldest churches, and few imagine what lay beneath their feet.
Some streets remind us of what happened to us
Other names preserve the memory of a specific event, sometimes cheerful, other times decidedly less so. These are the streets where the plaque tells a little story, and where versions often multiply over the centuries.
Via dei Malcontenti was the last stretch of the condemned
In the Santa Croce neighborhood, between Piazza Piave and Via delle Casine, there is a street with an uninviting name: Street of the Malcontents. This is where those condemned to death passed on their way to the gallows, which was located outside the Porta alla Giustizia, near the Arno. It’s easy to imagine their excitement as they traveled this final stretch!
The procession began from the Bargello, where prisoners were judged and incarcerated, and crossed the city accompanied by the brothers of the Compagnia dei Neri, whose task was to comfort the condemned in their final hours and to provide burial. For the Florentines who witnessed the procession, it was a public spectacle, and the street eventually took its name from those who walked it unwillingly.
Before becoming Via dei Malcontenti, it was called Via di San Nofero, after the tabernacle of Saint Onofrio, which still stands at the intersection with Via delle Casine. If you pass by, look up: it’s a tabernacle of unusually large dimensions, whose presence accompanied that final journey for a long time.
There are several explanations circulating for Borgo Allegri.
Borgo Allegri connects Via San Giuseppe to Piazza dei Ciompi, a few steps from Santa Croce, and is the street with the most romantic explanation in all of Florence. Too bad it’s also the least likely!
The most famous version is told by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives. Cimabue had his workshop here, and Charles of Anjou, passing through Florence, came here to see his large Madonna, still in progress. Crowds flocked to admire the work and see the king, with such enthusiasm that from that day on the street was called Borgo Allegri. According to Vasari, the painting was then carried in a solemn procession to Santa Maria Novella.
The problem is that that Madonna, the so-called Madonna Rucellai, today preserved in the Uffizi, was later recognized as work by Duccio di Buoninsegna and that, in the documents, an Allegri family appears from which the name of the street most likely derives.
However, when I pass by with a group, I always tell Vasari’s version: it’s too beautiful to leave to art historians alone! Today, Borgo Allegri is a quiet neighborhood street, with a small public garden popular with local families.
There are various hypotheses regarding the origin of Via delle Belle Donne.
Via delle Belle Donne is a short street between Piazza Santa Maria Novella and Via della Spada, a stone’s throw from Via Tornabuoni, and its name intrigues anyone who passes it. Who these beautiful women were, however, no one knows for sure.
The most popular theory links the name to the brothels that existed in this area in the Middle Ages, as well as on other streets in the city center. Some also speculate it was a painted sign, but neither of these versions is documented, and perhaps that’s precisely why the street continues to be a subject of debate.
If you pass by here, pay attention to the walls: along Via delle Belle Donne there are some wine holes, the small windows from which noble families directly sold the wine from their estates. I talked about them in Curiosities you can see in Florence, area by area.
The Arts have left their names on the plaques
In medieval Florence the work was organized in guilds that brought together those who practiced the same trade and which for a long time also played a decisive role in the city’s governance. Workshops in the same sector tended to be concentrated on the same street, and thus several trades ended up on plaques.
The oldest and most prestigious was the Calimala Art, which takes its name from the street where it was located, between Piazza della Repubblica and the Mercato Nuovo. It brought together merchants who imported woolen cloth from abroad, especially from Flanders and France, and finished and dyed it in Florence before reselling it throughout Europe. The earliest records date back to 1182, and it was so wealthy that it commissioned the Baptistery of San Giovanni: it was she who, in 1401, announced the competition for the second door, which was won by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
On the origin of the name Calimala scholars, however, disagree. Some attribute it to the Latin callis malus, meaning “bad road,” perhaps due to its reputation or the condition of the road surface, while others propose other explanations. It’s one of those cases where the plaque raises more questions than it answers.
A little further on, Shoemakers’ Street (Via de’ Calzaiuoli) the pedestrian street that connects the Duomo to Piazza della Signoria, recalls the hosiery manufacturers who had their shops here. Towards Santa Croce you will find Dyers’ Street (Via de’ Tintori), close to the Arno because a lot of water was needed to dye the fabrics, while in San Frediano via delle Caldaie takes its name from the large boilers in which the clothes were heated before dyeing.
If I traveled Shoemakers’ Street, stop in front of Orsanmichele. In the external niches, each guild placed the statue of its patron saint, entrusting it to the best sculptors of the time, from Donatello to Ghiberti to Verrocchio. Few things better convey the importance the guilds had in the life of the city. On the same side, you’ll also find the ancient measurements engraved in stone.
Via Torta still follows the curve of the Roman amphitheatre
I’ll end with a street with a seemingly banal name. Via Torta, a stone’s throw from Piazza Santa Croce, it’s called that simply because it’s crooked: instead of going straight, draw a soft curve like the houses that flank it.
That curve is almost two thousand years old. Between 124 and 130 AD, the Romans built a large elliptical amphitheater in this area, then just outside the walls of Florentia. When the structure was abandoned, the Florentines began building their homes using the walls and arches that were still standing, and the streets followed the perimeter of a building that no longer existed.
The result is still visible today: Via Torta, Piazza dei Peruzzi, and Via de’ Bentaccordi trace the amphitheater’s ring, and the elliptical shape is immediately apparent on the city map. Strolling around here, notice how the facades bend along the curve, and traces of the ancient walls have been identified in the cellars of some buildings.
It is one of the most evident traces of the Roman Florence, together with the ancient forum in Piazza della Repubblica.
These are some of the names I most often encounter walking through the city center, but the list could go on. My advice is to always pay attention to the corners of the buildings: sometimes, next to the modern plaque, there’s still an ancient stone one, with a different name that tells the story of what the city was like a few centuries ago.
If you like these hidden details, you can find more stories in Legends and hidden curiosities of Florence between the Duomo and the Uffizi, and for the more mysterious ones there is the post on The haunted places of Florence!
