New Florence bridge to honour Georgofili victims Caterina and Nadia Nencioni

The new bridge over the Arno planned in eastern Florence will be named after Caterina and Nadia Nencioni, two sisters who died in the 1993 Via dei Georgofili bombing, one of the most serious mafia attacks in the city’s modern history.

Florence mayor Sara Funaro announced the decision after a public online poll held over the past week. More than 11,000 votes were cast, with the proposal to dedicate the bridge to the Nencioni sisters receiving the largest share of support.

According to the results released by the city, the name Caterina and Nadia Nencioni received 3,872 votes, or about 35% of the total. The other options in the poll were the partisan Gilda Larocca, with 3,326 votes (30.2%), Nobel Prize-winning scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini with 2,816 votes (25.5%), and politician Tina Anselmi with 1,017 votes (9.2%).

The future bridge will connect the Bellariva neighbourhood on the north bank of the Arno with the Anconella park area on the south side of the river. The project is part of Florence’s broader plans to improve east–west mobility across the river and create an additional crossing in a part of the city currently served by relatively few bridges.

Commenting on the decision, mayor Sara Funaro said: “The choice to dedicate the new bridge over the Arno to Caterina and Nadia Nencioni is a gesture that brings together memory and civic responsibility. The two sisters, innocent victims of the Georgofili bombing, represent for Florence a deep wound, but also a constant reminder of the commitment to fight against the mafia.”

She added that naming a place in the city after them would help turn remembrance into a concrete and everyday sign, so that future generations continue to know and preserve the memory of what happened. According to the mayor, the strong participation in the online poll also shows how deeply this memory is still shared by the local community.

Caterina and Nadia Nencioni, aged 50 days and nine years respectively, were killed together with their parents in the explosion of a car bomb in Via dei Georgofili on the night of 27 May 1993. The attack, carried out by the Sicilian mafia as part of a series of bombings in Italy that year, also caused major damage to buildings around the Uffizi Gallery and injured dozens of people.

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