Department of Wry Public Art

Florence is a city full of art, a city of art. There are tabernacles on the sides of many buildings. There are statues in courtyards and, of course, there are courtyards everywhere. There are impressive palaces, churches, and civic buildings adorned inside and out with paintings and sculptures. In fact, even our apartment is in a building with a lovely statue guarding the mailboxes in the lobby. (By the way, please see the Thursday, March 3 post for an important announcement.)

All this art is not lost on the current generation of Florentines. Which brings us to the ...

Department  of Wry Public Art

Florence uses international traffic signage, signs that give you useful advice about traffic and street layouts without words, only simple symbols. We’ve found two of these signs to have been slightly modified by local artists in amusing ways.

The first sign was near the soccer stadium, an area we visited earlier this week when we picked up tickets for Sunday’s game, Florence versus Catania. The sign is the international sign for Do Not Enter which was posted, in this case, on a one-way street. A slight modification has been made to the sign.

The second sign warns the motorist that there is a T intersection ahead. Perhaps the urban artist was inspired by the fact that the intersections ahead happens to be on the side of one of Florence’s main cathedrals, Santa Croce.