Ponte Vecchio: The City That Continues

The Ponte Vecchio has stood for nearly seven hundred years. It survived the floods that destroyed it and forced it to be rebuilt. It survived the Second World War — the only bridge in Florence left standing when the Germans destroyed all the others in retreat. It survived the flood of 1966, when the Arno rose six meters and the world held its breath.

No one knows exactly why the Germans spared it. The documentation is thin. What is not in doubt is that every other bridge fell, and this one did not.

This is the final episode of the first season — and the story of the bridge that became a threshold between two versions of Florence: the city the world came to see, and the city the Florentines still inhabit. The butchers who were expelled to make room for goldsmiths. The Medici who crossed above it without ever touching the street. The Mud Angels who arrived from around the world in 1966 to pull paintings from the flood and save whatever could still be saved.

The Ponte Vecchio does not tell the story of Florence. It is the proof that Florence continues.

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Florence: The City That Changed the World is a series about the city that invented the Renaissance, financed Europe, and left a legacy still present in everything you see, think, and use every day.

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See you in Season Two — where we leave the stages behind and turn to the characters.