by DJ Schwend

Today, there was a full symphony of sun and blue sky, thunder, lightning rain and even hail (‘grandine’ in Italian). At the beginning of the week the full moon could be seen over the piazzas at night. All of these illuminations add to the beauty of the Italian experience by casting shadows and lighting the cacophony of art and architecture that abound here.

Walking through Campo de’ Fiori, ‘Field of Flowers’, during Louise Fili’s walking tour was curiously distracting. The piazza, filled with people, fresh fruit, vegetable and flower vendors, and bordered by bakeries and restaurants, is also the home to a foreboding statue of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for heresy on this site on February 17, 1600. Bruno was a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, Dominican Friar, and scientific thinker but his beliefs were threatening at the time. His crime was that he proposed a theory beyond that of Copernicus, that the Sun was essentially a star and the universe contained an infinite number of worlds inhabited by other sentient beings. After his death he has been regarded highly as a martyr of free thought and modern scientific ideas.

The inscription (click on arrow) reads:
A BRUNO – IL SECOLO DA LUI DIVINATO – QUI DOVE IL ROGO ARSE
To Bruno – the century predicted by him – here where the fire burned