It’s a well-known fact that fewer streets are named after women than men, and Florence is no exception, where 127 roads bear a woman’s name out of a total of 2,674 streets and squares. Today, Florence gains one more piazza called after a successful female.
Piazza Maria Montessori was inaugurated today at Manifattura Tabacchi, the former tobacco factory turned urban regeneration project.
Born in the Marche in 1870, Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori became a physician and educator renowned for her namesake philosophy of education based on children’s natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome instead, becoming one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy. Her educational method is in use globally in many public and private schools around the world.
The street sign features a sentence by Maria Montessori, reproduced in italics, a style particularly dear to her. “If there is for humanity a hope of salvation and help, this help can only come from the child, because within the child the man is built, and consequently society.”
The ceremony at Manifattura Tabacchi comes after other thoroughfares named after other woman physicians Marie Curie and Ernestina Paper in recent months.
