21-06-2025
The two-decade battle to fell Italy's most hated crane
Roberto Amadori dismantled a large crane in Florence this week and was suddenly the most popular man in the city.
'There was a crowd cheering when I finished,' he said. 'An elderly women rushed up to thank me, saying, 'Florence shines once again'.'
Amadori, who carries out such projects for a living, had pulled down not just any crane, but the most notorious and hated one in Italy.
Known locally as the 'Metal Monster' it had stood obstinately for 19 years in the narrow piazza between the two wings of the Uffizi Gallery, home to fabulous Botticellis, Caravaggios, Raphaels and Titians: a giant yellow eyesore looming over one of the biggest concentrations of beauty anywhere in the world.
Standing 60 metres high, it was a scar on a celebrated skyline which boasts Brunelleschi's magnificent cathedral dome, Giotto's bell tower and the 14th-century Palazzo Vecchio.
'This was a historic moment for our city — watching the dismantling of the crane after all these years was extremely emotional,' said the mayor Sara Funaro when the crane came down. The Italian culture minister travelled from Rome to celebrate the event.
Loathing of the crane grew as its survival, year after year, summed up a very Italian culture of political squabbling, lethargic bureaucracy and the shunting of tough decisions between stakeholders.
'For 19 years no one knew how to get rid of the crane and no one really knows why it stayed there so long,' said a local official who declined to be named. First erected in 2006, the 33-tonne crane was put to use as builders started converting the first floor of the gallery, which was still used to store archives, into a exhibition space to add to the existing gallery area on the second floor.
The metal structure was set up near the front door of the 16th-century building, opposite a statue of Giotto, the 14th-century painter and architect, who appeared to glower at it furiously. Planners said the crane would be needed for five years, but a decade later, with the conversion still continuing, Florentines began to question if the crane was really needed.
By 2018 Marco Stella, a councillor, was raging about the 'unacceptable' presence of the crane. People lit 12 candles at its base and wished it happy birthday in an ironic protest.
The crane, gru in Italian, was given its own Instagram page, 'Gru in Florence' which posted stunning photos of the city ruined by the crane sticking into them. The anonymous author of the cult page took on the persona of the crane, writing, 'Disclosure: I am 13 years old but in Gru-years that's 26,' and, 'If getting photoshopped out of pictures was a sport, I'd be [the record-breaking swimmer] Michael Phelps.'
Behind the jokes, anger was growing. 'People were asking, 'Is there an alternative to the crane?' But there were restrictions and despite mayors and local culture chiefs trying to get rid of it, they all failed,' the official said.
Almost inevitably, the crane became handy ammunition in local political battles. When Eike Schmidt, then director of the Uffizi, announced last year that he would stand for mayor — an election he lost — he took aim at the incumbent Dario Nardella. He claimed Nardella was only then waking up to the crane 'outside his office'.
Nardella hit back that as head of the Uffizi it was Schmidt's job to get rid of it, and said: 'He claims he is a great manager but he has not been able to take down a crane. How can he govern a city?'
The truth is the refurbishment, and the crane, were run by the local culture authority, part of Rome's ministry of culture, adding another layer of bureaucracy.
Typically the regional culture authority, known as a soprintendenza, is often short-staffed, underfunded and wrapped in red tape. But in 2023 the ministry handed control of the crane to the Uffizi and the following year a new director, Simone Verde, planned a final assault on the monster. Rather than waiting for funds, he raised €175,000 from a coalition of rich benefactors to replace the crane with a less intrusive elevator to raise building materials to the first floor.
Valerio Tesi, who is managing the refurbishment, says the elevator is needed because the job will not be finished for a few years.
One reason it is taking so long is that the first floor has already been put to use as an exhibition space and work to finish it needs to fit in around millions of visitors, he said. 'We also dug down 80cm at the bottom of a lift shaft during the refurbishment and found at least ten buried corpses from the Middle Ages,' he added.
Finally, on Monday, Roberto Amadori arrived in his lorry which has a telescopic crane and gently brought down pieces of the larger crane as workers unbolted them, taking care not to drop them through the roof of the gallery. 'Mostly I install air conditioning units on hotels, so as a Florentine, this job was a privilege and an honour since people in this city couldn't bear the sight of the crane anymore,' he said.
Verde reported that residents of the city had been stopping him in the street to thank him. 'Before it came down, one man in his eighties stopped me and said, 'Please let me see the Piazzale degli Uffizi again without the crane before I die'.'
Verde said the crane had been such an irritant for Florentines because they were so attached to their collection of art, churches and palazzos — even more so than Romans. 'The link between heritage and identity here is unique in the world,' he said.
The day after the crane vanished, Lucia Manneschi, a Florentine security guard, was patrolling the piazzale where the crane had stood and stopped to blink up at the blue sky. 'I'm 55 now, so I was 36 when they put that thing up,' she said. 'I'm so happy — I can't believe it's finally gone.'
