Mercato Nuovo, Florence

We basically did our own walking tour of Florence and first on the list was the New Markets, Loggia del Mercato Nuovo. While the stalls are similar to what we have at home, the location was not. Held in a loggia built around the middle of the 16th century, it was initially intended for the sale of silk and luxury goods and then for the famous straw hats. Today mainly leather goods and souvenirs are sold. We had been told how busy the market would be and to haggle, haggle, haggle, and that we would be approached as soon as we picked an item up but that was not the case at all. The sellers were not at all interested in selling us anything. Brad was wanting to buy a belt and even Brad didn’t haggle as he really wanted it and thought they wouldn’t care if they lost the sale. Needless to say, he paid too much and even told them to keep the change. It wasn’t the experience we expected to have.

On the southern side of the markets is the bronze fountain of a boar, called Il Porcellino by the locals, which means piglet in Italian. The fountain figure was originally sculptured and cast in 1633 and intended for the Boboli Garden, however the present statue is a modern copy, cast in 1998 and replaced in 2008. Somehow this unassuming fountain has made its way onto the “things to see in Florence” list and copies of this statue can be found around the world, in the Louvre in Paris and even in a Sydney Hospital. If you didn’t know about this famous fountain, you would walk right past it and not even know it was there as it is not huge in statue and not in a prominent location.

A tradition that the Scottish literary traveller Tobias Smollett noted in 1766, and is still followed today, is for visitors to put a coin into the boar’s jaws, with the intent to let it fall through the underlying grating for good luck and then rubbing the boar’s snout to ensure a return to Florence. We made sure we followed this tradition as we would do anything to ensure a return to Italy. The coins are then given to local charities and knowing this, we were quite disgusted to see some of the locals stealing the coins. Brad even called them on it and they backed off.Read more