Campo dei Fiori

Piazza Campo dei Fiori was paved in the middle of 1400 according to Pope Callisto III will who allowed a positive revaluation of all the area and encouraged the building of important elegant palaces.

One of the most important palaces is surely Orsini Palace, with the same name as the aristocratic family whose coat of arms had the image of an eel after which it was named piazza Del Biscione, a small square near Campo dei Fiori.

The incessant social and structural growth forced the well-known figures of that time to go obligatory across the square and so its welfare was being grown which turned Piazza Campo dei Fiori into a big horse market. Therefore the earliest hotels and lodging-houses in the area were born, followed by shops and craft businesses which increased more and more; that's why Piazza Campo di Fiori became one of the most blooming and important areas in the Centre of Rome.

Unfortunately the history and fame of the square do not consist only of positive events, in fact it was the place where executions took placed, and one of its tragic victims was Giordano Bruno, a philosopher and Dominican Friar who, blamed for heresy, was sent to the stake in the square on 17th February 1600.

When the judges who blamed him read the sentence, he said a phrase that has become known:

"While you are giving this judgment, maybe you are trembling more than me that I am listening to it"

Nowadays, in the middle of the square there is the statue with its face towards the Vatican city as a mark of non-submission.