Equestrian monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, Florence

The monument was designed by Salvino Salvini, and later modified by Emilio Zocchi, and inaugurated in 1890 in town, and moved to this site in 1932.

The first design of the monument dates to 1859, after the last Duke of Lorraine fled Florence, and Tuscany joined the expanding Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (now including Lombardy and other territories) ruled by Vittorio Emanuele II.

Plans by the architect Giuseppe Poggi, moved the statue to its new location, at a prominent intersection of avenues exiting out of the city.

In the base are two bronze bas-reliefs: in one, the king leaves the city to claim Rome, and in the other he receives news of the Tuscan plebiscite favoring union with the forming Kingdom of Italy.

Paradoxically, compared with the same topic, for example, in Milan (1878 by Ercole Rosa), Verona (1883), Bologna (1884 by Giulio Monteverde), Genoa (1886), Venice (1887), and Naples (1897); this steed is more sedate, perhaps wistful of an era that hoped the king would remain dismounted in his capital, but also recalling the similarly tame steeds in the late-Renaissance Florentine monuments honoring the Medici dukes Cosimo I and Ferdinando I.