Campo de' Fiori

Every morning this piazza fills with market stalls selling tomatoes, artichokes, fresh pasta, dried chillies, and flowers — it has been a market since at least the 1800s, and the name Campo de' Fiori means "field of flowers." But the hooded bronze figure in the centre staring down at you is a reminder that this was also Rome's main execution ground for centuries, and the man that statue represents was burned alive on this exact spot.

Giordano Bruno was a Dominican friar, philosopher, and cosmologist who proposed that the stars were distant suns with their own planets, that the universe was infinite, and that other worlds might harbour life. For these and other heresies — including questioning the divinity of Christ and the virginity of Mary — the Roman Inquisition tried him for seven years, then burned him at the stake on February seventeenth, 1600. He reportedly told his judges: "Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." The statue was erected in 1889, and the Vatican protested every stage of its construction.

The market runs every morning except Sunday. The best stalls are the ones that have been there longest — you can tell because they have the prime positions in the centre of the piazza. The dried chilli stands are spectacular: braided ropes of peperoncini hanging from the canopy frames, ground espelette, and a dusty-sweet aroma that hits you from three metres away. By midday the market packs up, the cleaners come through, and the piazza transforms into a restaurant and bar zone that gets progressively louder as the night goes on.

This was also a neighbourhood where you could get murdered fairly easily in Renaissance Rome. Caravaggio, who lived nearby, witnessed at least two killings in this piazza. Public executions were social events — spectators brought food and made a day of it. The juxtaposition of those cheerful vegetable stalls with the burned-philosopher vibe is peak Rome: beauty and horror, casually coexisting, for centuries.