Piazza Santa Trinita

This relatively small square, dominated by the Church of Santa Trinita preserves the irregular layout of the Medieval urban areas. Its development is closely connected with the Vallombrosan religious settlement, which was a Benedictine Order reformed by St. John Gualberto. The Florentine saint was an active supporter of the struggle against the simony of the bishops of Florence (that is, the sale of ecclesiastical offices for profit), and the reform which he instigated came to be identified with a struggle, in favour of the people, against Imperial power and injustice of the potentates. Consequently the history of the origins of the monastery of Santa Trinita, founded in the second half of the eleventh century, runs parallel to the birth of the new Florentine Commune and its progressive liberation from Imperial authority. This was the period of Countess Matilda and the dispute with the Emperor Henry IV, in which the Vallombrosan order and the city took sides with the countess and with Pope Gregory VII, setting in motion the Guelph allegiance of Florence. In the centuries following, the square and the monastery complex maintained a central role in the religious, cultural and social life of the city. Evidence of this is to be found in the architectural alterations to the church and the richness of its pictorial decorations, effected on the orders of the major families who had built their houses in the square or in the immediate surroundings.

In the center of the square stands the Column of Justice: on the top of a porphyry column, coming from the Bath of Caracalla, the statue of Justice, a sixteenth-century work by Francesco del Tadda, commissioned by Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

The Medieval Palazzo Spini Feroni, overlooking the church, today houses the Salvatore Ferragamo maison and Musuem