The Green Balcony Photo Sculpture
A green balcony Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) Florence, April 2017 �It has always hosted shops and merchants who displayed their goods on tables before their premises, after authorization of the Bargello (a sort of a lord mayor, a magistrate and a police authority). The back shops (retrobotteghe) that may be seen from upriver, were added in the seventeenth century. It is said that the economic concept of bankruptcy originated here: when a money-changer could not pay his debts, the table on which he sold his wares (the �banco�) was physically broken (�rotto�) by soldiers, and this practice was called �bancorotto� (broken table; possibly it can come from �banca rotta� which means �broken bank�). Not having a table anymore, the merchant was not able to sell anything.� ( Ponte Vecchio , Wikipedia)