The “Acculata Stone”, a very creative punishment!

Right in the center of the Loggia del Porcellino, in the floor,  there is a marble disk depicting a cart wheel. It indicates the point where the "carroccio" (cart) was placed with the insignia and flags of the Florentine Republic, where the army gathered in case of war. But the stone was also used for another purpose, much less noble and solemn: it served to punish and humiliate crooks, forgers and insolvent debtors. It was a very central market area always crowded with people.

The guards took the condemned to the square and there, crowd around screaming and mocking, he was stripped and ordered to beat his bare buttocks several times on the stone, which for this reason took the name of "acculata stone". The punishment was even indicated, in Latin, in the Statute of the Merchants Guild: “ostentando pubenda e percutiendo lapidem culo nudo” (showing the shameful body parts and beating the stone with the bare buttocks). Florentines of the Renaissance, artists but also jokers!