Explore the real-world places that appear in Still Life by Sarah Winman. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Piazza della Signoria, Uffizi Gallery, Ponte Vecchio, Piazza Santa Croce, The Arno River Embankment and 7 more.
Heart of Florence — civic stage for the novel's Florentine life
Florence's great public square is where Ulysses Temper, Evelyn Skinner and the circle around them move through the city's life. The square, with its statues and its sense of centuries of civic drama, embodies the novel's love of art and beauty as a way of surviving war and loss. Characters repeatedly return to the city center as a place of wonder and reunion.
The Piazza della Signoria has been the political center of Florence since the 13th century. It is dominated by the Palazzo Vecchio and the Loggia dei Lanzi, and was the site of the 1497 Bonfire of the Vanities and the 1498 execution of Savonarola.
The square is an open-air sculpture gallery and one of the busiest public spaces in Florence. Visitors can see a replica of Michelangelo's David, Cellini's Perseus and the Fountain of Neptune.
Visit: Piazza della Signoria (landmark)
Piazzale degli Uffizi — Evelyn Skinner's world of art
Evelyn Skinner, the art historian, is drawn to Florence's great paintings, and the Uffizi stands for the Renaissance tradition she devotes her life to. Her 1944 mission to salvage artworks endangered by the war ties her to the museum's treasures. The gallery's masterpieces echo the novel's theme of still life and the preservation of beauty.
The Uffizi was built from 1560 by Giorgio Vasari for Cosimo I de' Medici to house the city's magistrates' offices. It became one of the world's oldest art museums, and Florentine art was moved to safe storage during World War II.
The Uffizi holds works by Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Caravaggio. It is among the most visited museums in Italy.
Visit: Uffizi Gallery (museum)
Over the Arno — the bridge spared in 1944
The Ponte Vecchio sits over the Arno, whose waters later play a part in the novel's 1966 flood. The bridge recalls the wartime devastation of Florence, when retreating German forces destroyed the other bridges. For Ulysses and his friends it is a symbol of endurance and the city's survival.
The Ponte Vecchio dates in its present form to 1345 and has housed goldsmiths and jewelers since the late 16th century. It was the only Florentine bridge not destroyed by retreating German troops in August 1944.
The bridge is lined with jewelry shops and is one of the city's most photographed landmarks. It is open to pedestrians at all times.
Visit: Ponte Vecchio (landmark)
Eastern Florence — Basilica and neighborhood life
The Santa Croce quarter reflects the everyday Florence that Ulysses comes to know after his inheritance. The area around the basilica fits the novel's mix of street life, friendship and the artistic past. Ulysses and his companions drift through its piazzas, cafes and trattorie as their found family grows.
The Basilica of Santa Croce was begun in 1294 and holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli. During the 1966 flood the Santa Croce area was among the worst-hit, with water reaching several meters deep.
The piazza is a lively square with cafes and leather workshops. The basilica is a major tourist site and a place of pilgrimage to the tombs of Italian luminaries.
Visit: Basilica di Santa Croce (historic site)
Lungarno — the river of the 1966 flood
The Arno plays a central role in the novel's flood chapters. In November 1966 the river bursts its banks and floods Florence, endangering the city's art and its people. Ulysses and his friends join the effort to rescue what they can, and the disaster tests the bonds of the community they have built.
The Arno flood of 4 November 1966 killed more than 100 people and damaged millions of artworks and rare books. Volunteers from around the world, nicknamed the 'mud angels,' came to help recover Florence's heritage.
The Lungarno embankments are popular promenades, and plaques mark the flood height on several buildings. The river remains a core part of Florence's character.
Visit: Lungarno (park)
Hilltop above the Oltrarno — panoramic view of Florence
The hilltop view over Florence is the kind of vantage where the novel's characters reflect on beauty, memory and chosen family. From here the red domes and towers of the city spread out below, a panorama that sums up the book's love of Florence. It is a place for contemplation of the long arc of the characters' lives.
Piazzale Michelangelo was laid out in 1869 by architect Giuseppe Poggi as part of a redesign of the city's southern hills. It features a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David.
The terrace is a popular viewing point, especially at sunset, with cafes and a souvenir market. It is free and open at all hours.
Visit: Piazzale Michelangelo (park)
Montespertoli countryside — where Ulysses meets Evelyn in 1944
In 1944 Ulysses Temper, a young English soldier, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted Tuscan villa as the Allies advance. There he has his chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, the middle-aged art historian trying to salvage paintings from the ruins. The meeting forms a lasting bond between the two kindred spirits and launches the whole novel.
Castello di Montegufoni, near Montespertoli, sheltered Florentine masterpieces from the Uffizi during World War II, including Botticelli's Primavera. The castle later belonged to the Sitwell family and was fought over in the 1944 Allied advance.
The castle is now a private estate and resort with limited public access, used for stays and events. Its surroundings remain a landscape of vineyards and olive groves.
Chianti countryside — Ulysses returns after his inheritance
After an unexpected inheritance, Ulysses returns to the Tuscan hills, and the countryside becomes the novel's emotional home. Cypress-lined roads, vineyards and farmhouses form the backdrop for his new life among friends. The landscape reflects Winman's celebration of belonging and the pleasures of food, wine and company.
The Chianti hills between Florence and Siena have been wine country since at least the Middle Ages. Chianti Classico was formally defined as a wine zone by Cosimo III de' Medici in 1716.
The region is dotted with wineries, agriturismi and historic villages such as Greve in Chianti. Visitors travel its scenic roads for wine tastings and walks.
Near the railway station — arrivals and departures
Travelers to Florence arrive near Santa Maria Novella, where the station and church anchor the city's western edge. The area stands for the comings and goings of Ulysses, Evelyn and their friends as they travel between London and Tuscany over four decades. It marks transitions between the two halves of the characters' lives.
The Basilica of Santa Maria Novella was built by the Dominicans from the 13th century, with a Renaissance facade by Leon Battista Alberti. The adjacent railway station, Santa Maria Novella, opened in 1848 and its modernist building dates from 1934.
The basilica is a major museum-church with frescoes by Masaccio and Ghirlandaio. The station is Florence's main rail hub.
Visit: Basilica di Santa Maria Novella (historic site)
East End London — Ulysses's local pub
The Stoat and Parrot is the London pub where Ulysses returns after the war to his crew of pub crawlers and eccentrics. Characters such as Peg, Pete and Cress gather here, trading banter and forming a found family. The pub is a counterweight to Tuscany, the warm center of the London half of the story.
The Stoat and Parrot is a fictional establishment, placed here in London's East End, an area hit hard by the Blitz and rebuilt in the postwar decades. Traditional East End pubs were social hubs for working-class communities.
There is no real Stoat and Parrot, but many historic East End pubs survive near Spitalfields and Whitechapel. They give a flavor of the community pub the novel portrays.
North London — park and green escape
London's green spaces like Hampstead Heath offer the English counterpart to the Tuscan hills, a place for walks and reflection by characters back in England. Evelyn Skinner's English life and her memories of youth stand in contrast to her Italian experiences. The Heath represents the home the characters leave and return to.
Hampstead Heath is an ancient parkland of about 790 acres, preserved from development in the 19th century by public campaigns. It has long been a haunt of writers and artists.
The Heath is a free public park with swimming ponds, woodland and Parliament Hill's skyline views. It is open all day, every day.
Visit: Hampstead Heath (park)
Lungarno — Forster's Room with a View connection
The ghost of E. M. Forster haunts the novel, and Evelyn Skinner's youthful memories recall Forster's A Room with a View and its Florentine pension. Her encounter with the writer in her youth shapes her understanding of love and freedom. The pension is a literary echo that connects Evelyn's past to the novel's present.
Forster's 1908 novel A Room with a View was set partly in the fictional Pension Bertolini on the Arno, inspired by English visitors' lodgings in Florence. Many real pensions along the Lungarno served English tourists in the early 20th century.
Several hotels on the Lungarno trade on the Forster connection, though the pension itself is fictional. Visitors can walk the Lungarno and imagine the novel's scenes.
More by Sarah Winman: All Sarah Winman books
Other nearby maps: A Room with a View by E. M. Forster locations map · The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell locations map · The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello locations map · A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi locations map