Piazza San Florence has altered several times over time, beginning with the Roman era, when the city’s defenses were built here. If you walk in front of the Bargello Museum, you will notice a semi-circle on the street that marks the Roman tower unearthed by Annifa beneath the road surface. One of these little-known improvements is located just near to the Bargello Museum. We are discussing the church of S.Apollinare in its distinctive form, but it is a rather ordinary building. In truth, that little church was one of the twelve churches of the Priories of Florence, possibly built in the sixth century AD under the control of the Goths of Theodoric, and was dedicated to Apollinare, a Ravenna martyr of Syrian ancestry. The two notarial acts of January and February 1065 are dated back to the mid-twentieth century… “Vinea Sancti APPOLENARI” (the vineyards of S.Apollinare, at that time there were vineyards worked by the monks) and “Petium Terre Posite Extra Muros Civitatis Florentie Prope Ecclesiam Sancti Apollinaris” (request for land located outside the walls of the city of Florence near the church of Sant’Apollinare).

The Florence Carnival will begin on Saturday, January 27, with the Grand Ball at the Palazzo Vecchio, followed by a big parade in the center free to anyone. The 27-day program allows travelers to enter through the Cortile del Michelozzo. The masks, created by Florentine craftsmen using the papier-mâché processing technique, will be distributed here. Sters, a mask icon of the Florentine carnival developed in the eighteenth century by the artist Luigi Del Buono and rising to the “identity” of the territory, will greet those present. With him, several judicial figures will accompany persons in the presence, like the master of ceremony.