The River Arno
runs through the middle of Florencia. In 1966
it burst its banks, flooding Florencia and damaging
many priceless works of art.
The Arno is a river in region of Tuscany, Italy,
that crosses all the region from Mount Falterona
(near the city of Arezzo, in Casentino area),
to Pisa where it enters Tyrrhenian Sea.
Nothing is more fascinating than to enter one
of those quaint shops on the Vecchio Bridge
and see the old blackened benches which have
been used by gold-smiths for centuries and are
still in use today; to look upon the old dingy
walls, scratched with the name of many an illustrious
worker in metals ; and then, to glance out of
one of the tiny windows on the tremulous, golden
band of the Arno and at the landscape beyond
- an exquisite glimpse of sky and water and
hilltops - and to view, on either hand, the
moss-grown tiles of the city's roofs. Benvenuto
Cellini once had a shop on this bridge, but
it has long since been demolished. At the right
hand extremity of the bridge stood a hospice
of the Knights of Malta in which Ariosto stayed
for some months in 1513, and where he met the
beautiful Alexandrina Bennucci, who was then
passing the first months of her widow-hood there.
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