Originally this was just intended to be a "placement shot"; the type that I do when I just want to record where I was when I was shooting, what with the E-M1 not having a real GPS locator and all. (No, I'm not going to let that one go.)

I had processed some later photos and had intended to bypass this one, but the more I looked at it the more I thought that it gave a feel of time and place. I'm therefore going to include it in the gallery.

The word "calzaiuoli" apparently refers to shoe makers or cobblers, although you won't find it in most dictionaries, not even Treccani. (The word appears in entries in the Treccani encyclopaedia which refer to specific people, but not in the dictionary.) Apparently it's from an older version of Italian. (A word that's a few hundred years old in Firenze! Who'da thunk it?) In standard modern Italian the word for a shoemaker is il calzolaio, or i calzolai in the plural, so the connection is visible enough.

This 400 metre long road links the piazza del Duomo (the religious heart of the city) to the piazza della Signoria (the seat of government). In the past, segments of it have held different names depending on the business being conducted there. Sometimes it was the name of a family, sometimes the name of an industry. We can see the sign under the street name saying "già (previously) Corso degli Adimari", the name for this stretch of the street.

In the end the "shoe maker" name won out although you won't find many if any of them there now. Shoe sellers are a different matter. This is the main up market shopping drag in Firenze, and it's usually a pedestrian mall.

There are many historic buildings to see along the street as well, but either they weren't pointed out to us as we whizzed past, or they just went "whoooosh" over our heads as our brain consoles kept flashing red "Overflow!" warning lights.

This sign sits over the luxury watch store Enrico Verità 1865, just on the edge of the Piazza del Duomo. Put another way, we've continued north toward the Duomo on this leg of the tour.