New Guard Rails on Santa Trinita

Metal guard rails are in the process of being installed on Florence’s Santa Trinita bridge as a deterrent to people leaning out too far to take selfies those who climb down onto to the overhangs with a picnic or late night snack, some of whom have been known to fall in to the Arno river below.

The new addition is quite controversial.  To read more in Italian, and to see a photo gallery, visit Florence’s La Repubblica news site.

Once open to traffic, Ponte Santa Trinita now rings to the footsteps of pedestrians, who walk to and from Santo Spirito onto Florence’s fashion thoroughfare, Via Tornabuoni.

The Frescobaldi family commissioned the bridge’s original medieval version as a way of reaching their palaces across the Arno situated along the modern day Via Santo Spirito. After being carried away in 1557 by a flood for a second time, Ammanati was awarded the commission of the bridge, as we know it, by Cosimo I de’Medici as a testament.

Ammanati enlisted the help of an elderly Michelangelo, then in Rome, and Ponte Santa Trinita reflects his genius. The new bridge was designed with three arches of unprecedented slimness, according to an elliptical curve previously thought impossible. Construction also involved the entire neighborhood around it. The streets along the river (lungarni) were raised to meet the ends of the bridge; others were widened to create an elegant promenade.