The best view in all of Florence, we’d argue, is from the window of a goldsmith’s workshop on the Ponte Vecchio, at the very center of this bridge built in 1345. The studio, filled with rubber molds, metal saws and trays of gems, juts out over the Arno River, with the Uffizi in the foreground and the Renaissance city stretching along the water’s banks.
Though millions of visitors traverse the Ponte Vecchio, this window is reserved for a privileged few: for the goldsmith of Fratelli Piccini, and for the clients lucky enough to visit as they commission a custom-designed piece of jewelry.
Fratelli Piccini, opened by a family of jewelers in 1903, is today run by Elisa Piccini — a fourth-generation owner, the talented designer behind the shop’s own jewels, and a firm believer in maintaining the artistry and craft of the Ponte Vecchio tradition.
One of the few shops remaining on the bridge with a goldsmith’s workshop, Fratelli Piccini is the last of the area’s institutions still making high jewelry in-house, which makes a Piccini creation a singular souvenir from Florence — one that clients can design themselves, or with Elisa Piccini’s expertise and their choice of precious gemstones. Appointments can be booked online, and curious clients can watch the various stages of the jewel’s creation in the workshop.
As a city that has largely maintained its centurie sold architecture, Florence envelops visitors in the past — and nowhere more than on the Ponte Vecchio. The city’s oldest bridge, its medieval shops project outwards, seemingly jerry-rigged over the water with support beams.
Since a Medici decree in the 1500s, the bridge’s compact shops are reserved exclusively for jewelers, which remained artisan-led for centuries, carrying on the goldsmithing traditions that made Florence an Italian jewelry-making capital. Only in recent years have stores begun peddling multinational brands and commercially made jewelry, sadly replacing most of the goldsmith businesses on this storied stretch of cobblestone.
Even Fratelli Piccini now carries heavyweights such as Patek Philippe, Messika, Vhernier and other brands, “but they’re all family businesses, like ours,” Piccini points out. “As much as we can, we are still operating as an artisan atelier. Every shop on this bridge used to be unique, and now there’s so little variety, but we’re determined to maintain our personal vision.”