The Ponte Vecchio is home to no fewer than 48 jewellers, all squeezed into the tiniest of compartments. If these buildings seem bigger on the inside, it is because they jut over the water, secured by wooden struts that somehow held fast through the Biblical flood of 1966. But walk across the bridge now, on May 27, for the record, and you will see the barest handful of open doors among a locked majority. The Italian language has a range of sensuous vocabulary for rolling shutters
serranda
, saracinesca, persiana all of which capture the storied elegance of the storefronts. But as long as these shutters stay down, no jewellery is sold and no income comes in.