Stolpersteine in Florence are small memorials to individual lives destroyed by Nazi and Fascist persecution. Set into the pavement outside homes, workplaces and other significant locations, these modest brass plaques return names and personal histories to people who were arrested, deported and, in many cases, murdered in Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
In Italian they are called Pietre d’inciampo – literally “stumbling stones”. You may encounter them unexpectedly while walking through Florence. A name beneath your feet interrupts the familiar beauty of the city and reminds you that the streets of Florence also witnessed racial persecution, arrests and deportation during one of the darkest periods of European history.
Italian name: Pietre d’inciampo
German name: Stolpersteine
Project: Initiated by German artist Gunter Demnig
Form: Small brass-covered stones embedded in the pavement
Purpose: To restore names and individual identities to victims of Nazi persecution and deportation
In Florence: Stones are found throughout the city at locations connected with individual victims
What Are Stolpersteine?
The Stolpersteine project was created by German artist Gunter Demnig. Beginning in Germany and eventually spreading across Europe, the project places small memorial stones into ordinary pavements at places associated with people persecuted by National Socialism.
Each stone is approximately the size of a paving block. A brass plate records essential information: usually the person’s name, year of birth, persecution or arrest, deportation and, where known, their fate.
The concept is deliberately simple. Rather than gathering remembrance exclusively within a central monument, Stolpersteine return memory to the streets where people once lived and worked.
A Stolperstein does not physically cause a pedestrian to stumble. The “stumbling” is metaphorical: the small brass plaque interrupts an ordinary walk and asks us to stop, read a name and remember a person.
Why Are There Stolpersteine in Florence?
Florence was not separated from the persecution that engulfed Europe during the Holocaust. Italy’s Fascist regime introduced racial laws in 1938, stripping Jewish citizens of fundamental rights and excluding them from many areas of public life.
After the German occupation of central and northern Italy in September 1943, the situation became dramatically more dangerous. Jews were arrested and deported, with Italian Fascist authorities and collaborators playing an active role in persecution and arrests.
Florence therefore has its own geography of the Holocaust: houses from which residents disappeared, streets where people were arrested, institutions targeted during raids and places associated with those who never returned.
The Stolpersteine in Florence make this history visible within the modern city.
The persecution of Italian Jews did not begin with the German occupation. Fascist Italy introduced antisemitic racial legislation in 1938. After September 1943, persecution escalated into arrest and deportation under German occupation and the Italian Social Republic.
Jewish Florence Before the Holocaust
To understand the meaning of the Stolpersteine, it is important to remember that Jewish life in Florence had existed for centuries before the Holocaust.
Our guide to Jewish Florence – the Synagogue, the Ghetto and a Hidden History follows this much longer story. Jewish merchants, bankers, scholars, families and religious communities formed part of Florentine life through periods of relative tolerance as well as restriction and segregation.
For centuries, one of the most important locations was the Jewish ghetto near what is now Piazza della Repubblica. During the nineteenth century, emancipation allowed Jewish citizens greater freedom, while the construction of the magnificent Great Synagogue expressed a new visibility and confidence.
By the twentieth century, Jewish Florentines were woven into the social, professional and cultural life of the city. The racial laws of 1938 attempted to tear those connections apart.
Angela Todesco Benedetti – A Name in Via degli Speziali
One of the Stolpersteine in the historic centre lies at Via degli Speziali 3, only steps from Piazza della Repubblica.
It remembers Angela Todesco Benedetti.
Angela Todesco was born in Venice on 2 July 1893, the daughter of Eugenio Todesco and Vittoria Frank. She married Umberto Benedetti and lived in Florence at Via degli Speziali 3.
She was arrested in Sondrio and subsequently detained in Milan. On 30 January 1944 she was deported on Convoy No. 6, which arrived at Auschwitz on 6 February. She did not survive the Shoah. Her recorded date of death is 29 February 1944.
Born: 2 July 1893, Venice
Lived in Florence: Via degli Speziali 3
Arrested: Sondrio
Deported: Auschwitz
Died: 29 February 1944
Her Stolperstein is particularly striking because of its location. Via degli Speziali today forms part of one of the busiest pedestrian routes through central Florence. Thousands of people pass between Piazza della Repubblica and Piazza della Signoria without necessarily noticing the small brass square beneath them.
Yet the words “Qui abitava” – “Here lived” – change the meaning of the street. This was not simply the address of an anonymous Holocaust victim. It was Angela Todesco Benedetti’s home.
The Photograph on This Page
The photograph accompanying this article was taken by Firenze Casa in Florence on the morning of 25 August 2026. It shows the Stolperstein for Angela Todesco Benedetti in Via degli Speziali.
There is something important about encountering these memorials unexpectedly. They are not separated from everyday life by museum walls. People walk past them on their way to work, to a café, to the railway station or through the historic centre.
That is precisely where memory has been placed: within the ordinary life of the city.
We photographed Angela Todesco Benedetti’s Stolperstein during an ordinary morning walk through Florence. That unexpected encounter captures the purpose of the project particularly well: history appears beneath our feet and asks us, for a moment, to stop.
Other Stolpersteine in Florence
Angela Todesco Benedetti represents only one of many lives remembered by Stolpersteine in Florence. The stones are distributed across different neighbourhoods because persecution affected people living throughout the city.
In Via delle Oche, another stone remembers Diodato Gastone Sadun. He worked in the haberdashery shop belonging to his uncle Leone Camerino and was arrested there on 13 December 1943 while preparing to flee to Switzerland with his brother. He was deported to Auschwitz in January 1944 and murdered later that year.
At Via Trieste 20, stones remember Elena Calò and Ernesto Calò, both deported to Auschwitz. Elsewhere in Florence, the names engraved into brass include Jewish victims, political deportees, military internees and others persecuted and deported under Nazi and Fascist rule.
This broader scope is important. Although the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry form a central part of this history, the Stolpersteine project also commemorates other individuals persecuted by National Socialism.
The Raid on the Settimio Saadun Jewish Home
One of the most devastating episodes of the persecution of Jews in Florence occurred at the Ospizio Israelitico Settimio Saadun, a Jewish charitable home for elderly and sick people.
On 24 May 1944, 24 people were seized there: twenty-one elderly residents and three members of a French family, including two very young children.
Most were transferred first to Fossoli and then deported to Auschwitz. The deportees who reached Auschwitz were murdered after arrival. The victims included elderly and sick people as well as children only one and two years old.
The episode is a particularly stark reminder that the persecution in Florence reached the most vulnerable members of the Jewish community.
The history of the Holocaust is made up not only of enormous numbers but of individual people: children, parents, grandparents, neighbours and colleagues. The purpose of the Stolpersteine is to return those individual identities to the places from which they were taken.
Why the Stones Are Placed in Everyday Streets
The location of each Stolperstein is fundamental to the project. Traditional memorials usually ask us to travel to a designated place of remembrance. Stolpersteine reverse that relationship: remembrance enters everyday life.
A person walking through Florence may encounter one while shopping, going home or exploring a neighbourhood. The brass surface is deliberately small. You have to look down and often move closer to read it.
Once you do, the city around you changes. The building is no longer simply an old Florentine house. It becomes the last known home of a particular person before persecution removed them from ordinary life.
The memorial therefore reconnects biography with geography.
Names Instead of Numbers
The Nazi system attempted to strip victims of individuality. Deportees were classified, registered and, in concentration camps, often reduced administratively to numbers.
Stolpersteine deliberately reverse that process.
Each brass plate begins with a person. A name. A birth year. A home. Then come the words that record persecution: arrested, deported, imprisoned, murdered.
The scale is intimate because the memory is individual.
A Stolperstein does not attempt to tell the entire history of the Holocaust. It does something smaller and profoundly human: it restores one name to one place.
Piazza della Repubblica and a Lost Jewish Florence
The location of Angela Todesco Benedetti’s stone near Piazza della Repubblica creates another historical connection.
Centuries before the Holocaust, Florence’s Jewish ghetto stood in this part of the city. During the great nineteenth-century redevelopment of central Florence, the ghetto and the neighbouring Mercato Vecchio disappeared almost completely.
The elegant Piazza della Repubblica that visitors see today therefore covers a much more complicated urban history. Medieval streets, market buildings, homes and much of the former Jewish quarter were removed during the transformation of Florence after Italian unification.
A Stolperstein only a few steps away introduces yet another layer of Jewish history: not segregation in the early modern city, but persecution and deportation in twentieth-century Florence.
Together, these places demonstrate why exploring Jewish Florence means reading traces scattered across the city rather than visiting a single monument.
The Great Synagogue – Survival and Continuity
The Great Synagogue of Florence provides an important counterpoint to the Stolpersteine. Its enormous green dome represents the confidence of the Jewish community following nineteenth-century emancipation.
During the German occupation, the synagogue was desecrated and used for storage. German forces attempted to destroy it during their retreat from Florence in 1944, but the building survived.
Today the synagogue remains an active place of Jewish worship as well as one of Florence’s most remarkable nineteenth-century buildings. Its survival gives the story of Jewish Florence another dimension.
The Stolpersteine remember lives that were destroyed. The synagogue also represents continuity: Jewish life in Florence survived the attempt to eradicate it.
Florence During the German Occupation
The Stolpersteine also belong to the broader history of Florence during the Second World War. Following the Italian armistice in September 1943, German forces occupied the city and remained until the summer of 1944.
Those months brought persecution, arrests, violence and deportations. At the same time, members of the Florentine Resistance, religious institutions and individual citizens took enormous risks to hide or assist people threatened by persecution.
The liberation of Florence in August 1944 ended the occupation but could not restore the lives of those already deported.
Walking through Florence today, it can be difficult to reconcile these events with the beauty and apparent permanence of the historic city. The Stolpersteine make that history impossible to separate completely from the streets where it happened.
How to Encounter the Stolpersteine in Florence
The Stolpersteine are not monuments that need to be “collected” as tourist attractions. Their power comes partly from encountering them within the ordinary fabric of Florence.
If you notice one, stop for a moment and read the inscription. Look at the building beside it. Read the name again. If you want to know more, the Comune di Firenze and historical organisations provide information about many of the individuals commemorated.
A walk connecting several stones can also become a meaningful way of understanding the geography of persecution. But the emphasis should remain on the people rather than the number of memorials visited.
The Stolpersteine are memorials embedded in public streets, often directly outside homes. They require no ticket or opening hours. A respectful visit simply means stopping, reading the name and remembering that the inscription represents a real human life.
Memory in the Streets of Florence
Florence is a city in which history is exceptionally visible. Renaissance palaces, medieval churches, sculptures and monuments surround us almost everywhere. Yet some of the city’s most important historical traces are among its smallest.
The Stolpersteine in Florence measure only a few centimetres across. They do not dominate a piazza or alter the skyline. Instead, they insert individual memory quietly into streets that continue to be lived in every day.
That modest scale is precisely what gives them their power.
When we read the name Angela Todesco Benedetti in Via degli Speziali, the Holocaust ceases for a moment to be an abstract historical event. We know that a woman born in 1893 once lived at this address in Florence. She had a family, a home and an ordinary life. Then persecution took that life away.
The stone gives her name back to the street.
Florence teaches history through magnificent buildings and great works of art. The Stolpersteine ask us to remember history differently: one person, one name and one address at a time.
Further Reading on Firenze Casa
Continue exploring Jewish history and the changing urban landscape of Florence:
- Jewish Florence – The Synagogue, the Ghetto and a Hidden History
- Mercato Vecchio Florence – The Lost Old Market
References
- Comune di Firenze / FeelFlorence – Pietre d’inciampo a Firenze.
- Comitato per le Pietre d’Inciampo di Firenze – documentation and memorial project.
- Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC) – Digital Library and records of Jewish deportees from Italy.
- Comunità Ebraica di Firenze – historical documentation on the Jewish community of Florence.
- Fondazione Museo e Centro di Documentazione della Deportazione e Resistenza – historical resources on deportation from Tuscany.
- ANED – Associazione Nazionale Ex Deportati nei Campi Nazisti.
- ANEI Firenze – documentation on the Pietre d’inciampo in Florence.
- Picciotto, Liliana – Il libro della memoria: Gli ebrei deportati dall’Italia (1943–1945).
