Florence was not a gentle place. The Pazzi conspiracy (1478): assassins attacked Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici during Mass in the Duomo. Giuliano was stabbed 19 times. Lorenzo fought his way into the sacristy and barred the bronze doors. The retribution was savage: conspirators were hanged from the windows of Palazzo Vecchio, and Botticelli was hired to paint their dangling bodies on the facade as a warning. The city that created the Renaissance also created political murder as art form.
The plan: The Pazzi banking family, supported by Pope Sixtus IV, would assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici during Easter Mass at the Duomo — seizing control of Florence. The attack: At the ringing of the cathedral bell (the signal), assassins struck. Giuliano was stabbed 19 times in the nave — he bled to death on the marble floor. Lorenzo was slashed across the neck but fought back with his sword, retreated into the sacristy, and his friends barred the heavy bronze doors (designed by Donatello — you can still see them). The aftermath: Florence went insane. The Pazzi conspirators were hunted — Archbishop Salviati was hanged from the Palazzo Vecchio windows in his ecclesiastical robes. Francesco de' Pazzi was stripped naked, dragged through the streets, and hanged beside him. Botticelli was commissioned to paint the hanged conspirators on the Palazzo Vecchio facade (the paintings are lost — but imagine: Botticelli, the painter of Venus and Spring, painting dangling corpses for political propaganda).
When Michelangelo was 17, studying in Lorenzo de' Medici's sculpture garden, he mocked a fellow student's work. The student — Pietro Torrigiano — punched him in the face, breaking his nose permanently. Michelangelo's nose remained crooked for life (visible in every portrait, including the self-portrait in the Sistine Chapel's Last Judgment). Torrigiano was expelled from Florence — he later sculpted the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. He bragged about breaking Michelangelo's nose for the rest of his life.
1. The bull on the Duomo. On the north side of the cathedral, high on the wall: a carved bull's head. Legend: A builder sculpted it facing the house of a woman who'd rejected him — the horns = cornuto (cuckold). She had to look at it every day. 2. The wine windows. Over 150 tiny doors (buchette del vino) in palazzo facades — built in the 16th century to sell wine directly from noble houses to the street. Some reopened during COVID and remain active — look for small wooden shutters at knee level on Via del Serpente, Via delle Belle Donne, Via del Presto. 3. Dante's stone. Sasso di Dante (Piazza del Duomo, southeast corner) — a stone where Dante supposedly sat watching the construction of the Duomo. He was exiled from Florence in 1302 and never allowed to return. He died in Ravenna in 1321. Florence has been trying to get his bones back for 700 years. Ravenna refuses.
4. The Vasari Corridor graffiti. German soldiers retreating in 1944 mined the Ponte Vecchio bridges but spared the Vasari Corridor — supposedly on direct orders from Hitler, who'd walked it during his 1938 Florence visit and admired it. They destroyed the medieval tower houses at both ends instead. 5. Michelangelo's David faces south — toward Rome. When it was installed in 1504, it symbolized Florence's defiance against papal and foreign aggression. David faces the enemy. The slingshot is over his LEFT shoulder. 6. The flooding of 1966. On November 4, 1966, the Arno flooded Florence under 6m of water, oil, and mud. International volunteers ("Mud Angels") saved thousands of artworks. High-water marks are visible throughout the city — look for plaques on building facades at head height.