Campo di Marte: Nervi's stadium and the quiet grid
Nervi's helical stadium stairs, an early-1900s residential grid, and Florence on its day off. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Firenze Campo di Marte station
Mazzoni's 1930s rail station, all travertine and rationalist lines — the way the quarter announces itself. A few minutes out from Santa Maria Novella but a different city. Start here; the architecture begins at the platform.

2. Stadio Artemio Franchi — Nervi's stairs
Pier Luigi Nervi's 1932 stadium, a concrete masterpiece. The marvel is the cantilevered helical staircases that spiral down the back, and the Marathon Tower — engineering as sculpture. You can read them from the street on a non-match day; walk the perimeter and look up.

3. The residential grid
South and west of the stadium, the streets fall into a calm early-20th-century grid — *villini* (detached villas) with gardens, low traffic, plane trees. On a Sunday it's a different speed entirely. Wander a couple of blocks; the pleasure is the ordinariness.

4. Piazza delle Cure
A working neighbourhood square to the north, with a small daily market and bars where nobody is a tourist. A coffee here is a coffee among Florentines doing their Sunday. The square is the social centre the grid orbits.

5. Le Cure / Mugnone stream
The Mugnone, the little river that edges the quarter, with a green walkable bank in stretches. Not dramatic — a city stream, willows, joggers — but it's where the grid meets some air. Follow it a short way, then cut back east.

6. Campo di Marte parade ground
The open ground that gave the quarter its name — once the 'field of Mars', a military parade and sports ground. Now playing fields and a wide horizon, rare inside Florence. Cross it back toward the station; the train into the centre takes four minutes.

Campo di Marte: Nervi's stadium and the quiet grid