The San Niccolò neighbourhood where I have my Studio is like a stroll amidst art, where you can find many ateliers of painters, sculptors, and performers, and even antique shops, jewellers, goldsmiths and restorers. In times past the area harboured merchants and shop keepers and was called “the flea-bitten village”, because of its precarious nature, shored up against the defensive walls of the city, a temporary settlement in the intent of the Florentine urban planners of the time. Maybe this is why I immediately felt myself at home there, with its precarious and unstable character, but also real and authentic just as an artist should be. A part of the city far from the reality of the Florence of the tourists.