High above your head sits a marble plaque with a line and a date. That is where the water reached on , well above the doorways and far above the shop windows you pass beneath today.
A little lower in the same corner is an older mark, from a flood centuries earlier, because the came into the city more than once. Seeing the two so close together in a single wall makes it clear at a glance just how extraordinary 1966 really was.
Marks like these turn up all through the old centre, sometimes carved officially in marble and sometimes as a painted line with a year beside it. Once you start noticing them you spot them everywhere, and that is exactly what the city intended: a warning at eye level, for whoever comes after us.
At the eastern end of this street lies a large square, with a along its short side.
Sources. Story: Comune di Firenze (commemorative flood plaques); Archivio Storico del Comune di Firenze (marks of the Arno floods) Photos: High-water mark of the 1966 flood, via Wikimedia Commons, photo Gryffindor, CC BY-SA 3.0; commemorative plaque of the flood, via Wikimedia Commons, photo Francesco Memoli, CC BY-SA 4.0
