Ponte Vecchio Goldsmiths

The Ponte Vecchio is Florence's medieval bridge of goldsmiths — a row of tiny jewellers' shops strung across the Arno, and perhaps the most romantic jewellery address in the world. What makes it more than a postcard is that the trade here is preserved by law: a 1593 Medici decree, still in force, means every shop on the bridge is, by rule, a goldsmith's or jeweller's.

The bridge itself dates to 1345 and once held butchers and fishmongers, who threw their waste into the river below. In 1565 Cosimo I de' Medici had the Vasari Corridor built straight over the shops, so the ruling family could cross the city unseen between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti Palace. In 1593 his successor Ferdinando I evicted the other trades in favour of goldsmiths and silversmiths — partly to stop the smell rising to the corridor above — and that decree has defined the bridge ever since.

Today some shops are still owned by descendants of the families who arrived after 1593, and a few keep their old workshop windows, where you can watch goldsmiths working by hand. A bronze bust of Benvenuto Cellini, Florence's most celebrated goldsmith, stands at the centre of the bridge.

The Ponte Vecchio is the icon, but the living craft is in the Oltrarno just across the river, where Florentine goldsmithing continues in working ateliers — and the Medici silver collections sit nearby in the Museo degli Argenti at the Pitti Palace.