A big stone falls down from the Column of the abundance

A stone of about 80 pounds and 50 inches in diameter fell off the Column o abundance that supports the statue in piazza della Repubblica in the center of Florence.

At the foot of the column, there is usually a step where tourists and florentins stop. Because of the rain, at the time of falling down there was no one.

According to firefighters, the fragment was detached at 5 pm from the base of the statue, perhaps because of water infiltration. The monument is owned by Comune di Firenze, which opened an internal investigation into the incident.

The original Roman column was destroyed in the fifteenth century and in 1431 and replaced by a new one, surmounted by a statue of Donatello: a female figure holding a cornucopia symbol of prosperity and luck.

In 1721, the prolonged exposure to the weather did shatter even this column, which was restored and brought to  a shelter (now the colmun is housed in the atrium of the headquarters of the Bank of Italy, in via dell’Oriuolo).

In piazza della Repubblica was built on a new column with a statue, a copy of that of Donatello, by the sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini.

At the end of the nineteenth century the column and the statue was dismantled and only the mid-twentieth century, after having been found in a yard in via della Calza, were relocated in the original place.