Via de’ Calzaiuoli

Of all the streets that radiate from the Piazza del Duomo, the straight, pedestrian-only Via de’ Calzaiuoli is the one most people almost intuitively turn down, the Roman street that became the main thoroughfare of medieval Florence, linking the city’s religious centre with the Piazza della Signoria. When Giuseppe Poggi widened this ‘Street of the Shoemakers’ in the Florence's mid-19th century 'restoration', it destroyed much of its medieval character, and the only shoe shops to be seen are designer-label.