Loggia del Mercato Nuovo

The Loggia del Mercato Nuovo, popularly known as the Loggia del Porcellino is a building in Florence, Italy. It is so called to distinguish it from the "Mercato vecchio" (old market) located in the area of today's Piazza della Repubblica.

The loggia was built around the middle of the 16th century in the heart of the city, just a few steps from the Ponte Vecchio. Initially it was intended for the sale of silk and luxury goods and then for the famous straw hats, but today mainly leather goods and souvenirs are sold.

In the corner niches statues of famous Florentines were intended to be placed, but only three were made during the 18th century: Michele di Lando, Giovanni Villani, and Bernardo Cennini.

The focal point of the loggia is the "Fontana del Porcellino" (Fountain of Porcellino), actually a bronze wild boar by Pietro Tacca from the sixteenth century, which original can be found at the Palazzo Pitti. In its stead a copy of a Hellenistic sculpture was kept at the Uffizi. The popular tradition has it that touching the nose brings fortune, actually it shines due to polishing by hundreds of hands. The full procedure for obtaining a good omen would be to put a coin in the mouth after rubbing the boar's nose: if the falling coin passes the grate, where the water flows, it brings luck, otherwise not. In fact, the inclination is of such kind, that only the heaviest coins are falling in the slits, to the satisfaction of the municipality, which is collecting them.

Another oddity of the place is the so-called "pietra dello scandalo" (scandal stone), a round marble bicoloured place in the centre of the loggia, which is only visible when there are no sales stalls. This stone marked the point where insolvent debtors were punished in Renaissance Florence. The punishment consisted of captivation of the victims, and once they took off their pants they repeatedly were beaten on the buttock. From this custom the humiliating way of the popular sentence "essere con il culo a terra" (to be with the butt on the ground) could be derived or, perhaps, the expression "sculo" seen as bad luck.

=Other

ee also

*Mercato Vecchio
*Mercato Centrale (Firenze)
*Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio

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