PIAZZA della MINERVA

Three Latin inscription plaques on a white wall, one with a drawing of a hand pointing to a small boat among waves and another with a drawing of a hand holding a boat among stylized water.

Photograph of three plaques on a wall, two rectangular inscriptions in Latin and one small black plaque with Latin text.

The Piazza della Minerva is more rectangular than square and at its lowest point is the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Due to this it is prone to flooding and on the façade of the church are these wonderful plaques commemorating floods from 1422 to 1598 with really whimsical illustrations of flood waters being zapped out of a finger. The most striking however is the most recent from 1870 with its deep horizontal line cut into the plaque suggesting to me that was the water level, about my head hight. ⁣

In 1633 the Roman Inquisition was held here where they read out their sentencing to Galileo for his insisting the Earth rotates around the Sun in which he was found “foolish and absurd in philosophy” and “vehemently suspect of heresy” ⁣

“And yet it moves…” said Galileo.