In August 1944 the retreating German army blew up every bridge across the Arno in Florence except one, the Ponte Vecchio. The crossing sits at the river’s narrowest point, used since Roman times on the Via Cassia, and first appears in writing in 996. Wooden versions washed away, including in 1117, and the catastrophic flood of 1333 described by Giovanni Villani left only two piers standing. The 1345 rebuild, credited by Giorgio Vasari to Taddeo Gaddi but now mostly attributed to Neri di Fioravanti, used long, shallow segmental arches, with a central span of about 30 meters, that let floodwater and debris pass through instead of damming up.

The flat roadway became prime real estate for farmers, tanners, and butchers who dumped their waste into the river, and by 1442 the butchers’ guild held the whole bridge. In 1565 Cosimo I de’ Medici had Vasari build the elevated Vasari Corridor over the shops, and that same year a decree replaced the butchers with goldsmiths and jewelers, a rule still in force. In 1944 the Germans spared the span but blasted the buildings at both ends into mountains of rubble to slow the British Eighth Army. The arches held again in the 1966 flood, and in April 2024 the city announced a multi-year restoration.

• The Easter 1215 murder of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti on the bridge that sparked the Guelph and Ghibelline wars, later recalled by Dante in Paradiso
• The 17th century back shops cantilevered over the water on wooden corbels
• The Torre dei Mannelli guarding the southeast corner and the dedication stone in the central loggia
• The persistent myth that Hitler personally ordered the bridge saved
• Why the city cut 5,500 love locks from the railing around the 1900 bust of Benvenuto Cellini and set a 50 euro fine