Florence tour: the wine windows
Another example of a Florence tour with our Florence guides, today we discover during our Florence tour le buchette del vino
Small windows in the ancient walls of some of the facades of the buildings in Florence. A small wooden door that opens onto a 500-year-old Florentine tradition.
It is from these “buchette” (small windows) that since 1500, with the permission of Cosimo dei Medici, land owners started to sell their wine, and the flask was directly passed from these holes to the cellar of the noble families residence.
As time passed by, wine holes were used not only for flasks, but also to sell a glass of wine or to make charity of food.
The sale of wine through the buchette, it was for a rich landowners, a profitable practice ,because it was taxes free, and they could avoid the intermediation of tavern owners and sell their wines at lower prices.
In 1643 the buchette del vino were very effective against the spreading of plague because people selling wine could not make any kind of external contact. In 2020, someone decided to try to put back again in use the very few remaining buchette still open.
May be could happen that, on your next trip to Florence during a Florence tour, you’ll have the opportunity to immerse yourself in history and buy your glass of wine directly from one of the original wine holes.
Today there are more than 100 buchette in the center of Florence and if you want to have fun looking for them during your stay in the city we leave here some indication where to find them or, if you prefer to be guided by Florence guides in a Florence tour, you can book a tour with our official guides of Florence.
Let us accompany you in the history of our city!