Campo de' Fiori

Once a flowering meadow, later a place of markets and public executions. The statue of Giordano Bruno (1889) at its centre commemorates the philosopher burned at the stake here in 1600. In the morning the square hosts a market of fruit, flowers and spices; in the evening it fills with bars and restaurants.

Did you know: Giordano Bruno's statue deliberately faces the Vatican: it was erected after Italian unification as a symbol of freedom of thought.

✦ The legend: One tradition traces the name to Flora, the woman Pompey loved, whose theatre stood nearby: the meadow that stretched here would have been “Flora's field”. Historians favour a plainer explanation — it really was a flowering field, not yet built on — but the romantic name is the one that has stayed in the guidebooks and in people's speech.