Today is like a really special day for Bames Live because as we are honored to have a guest post from the author of the books The Inferno Experience: Tuscany & The Inferno Experience: Florence -- Sara Bruni. Sara posts about one of the Inferno's hidden secrets - Florence's bloodiest murder. Her latest book, Inferno’s Hidden Secrets and Eternal Mysteries, is to be released at the end of May, 2013. As part of her efforts to promote her latest book, Sara has decided to post as a guest on Bames Live. Isn't that wonderful? :) For the most part, Dan Brown’s Inferno takes place inside Florence, the city where Dante wrote about hell, purgatory and paradise, about a mysterious world filled with symbolism. In the book The Inferno Experience: Inferno’s Hidden Secrets and Eternal Mysteries, to be released Friday May 31, we will check out the background of all the symbols, codes and references that Dan Brown mentions in Inferno, so Florence will not hold any secrets from you any more.
When writing this book, I discovered so many interesting facts and intriguing mysteries, it’s hard to wait until next Friday to tell you about them. So I decided to tell you about one of them: Florence’s bloodiest murder ever.
When Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks are rushing through the Corridoio Vasariano Langdon remembers that somewhere on the Ponte Vecchio is the spot where the bloodiest murder in Florentine history was committed.
Nowadays the Ponte Vecchio is one of the most crowded tourist spots. There have been stores on the Ponte Vecchio since the 13th century. Initially, there were all types of shops, including butchers and fishmongers and later tanners, whose industrial waste caused a pretty rank stench. In 1593, Ferdinand I decreed that only goldsmiths and jewellers be allowed to have their stores on the bridge. Cellini, a 16th century goldsmith, is honoured with a bust on the bridge. By night, the wooden shutters of the shops make them look like suitcases and wooden chests, making it a very suggestive route to take along an evening passeggiata, or stroll.
What about the story about the bloodiest murder ever? Langdon is referring to the murder of Buondelmonte De’ Buondelmonti, whose death is still very much alive in the Florentine consciousness thanks to the plaques that have been put up near the place of the murder, each with a fragment from canto 16 of Dante’s Paradiso, in which he refers to the murder.
It was this murder you see that started the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which caused lots and lots of bloodshed in both Florence and the surrounding countryside. Which is why it is called ‘the bloodiest murder ever’, as De’ Buondelmonti’s slaying was followed by so many other murders.
If you are interested in being guided through Hell and Heaven in Florence and in Tuscany, as well as get to know Inferno’s Hidden Secrets and Eternal Mysteries, be sure to check out The Inferno Experience: www.infernoexperience.com