Festa della Toscana
Pioneering Human Rights
[
Maddalena Delli]
On November 30th 1786, Tuscany was the very first State in the western world to pass an Act that abolished not just torture, but also capital punishment. The Bill was promoted by Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine, 9th Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790, who was later to become Emperor of Austria. It is in his honor that the Penal Reform Bill has become known as the Leopoldine Code. Sadly, this enlightened ruler was later to endure a first-hand experience of the barbarity of death penalty when his own sister Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI of France, was guillotined in Paris in October 1793 during the French Revolution. A plaque in the courtyard of the Bargello Palace in Florence, now the National Museum but formerly the city prison and courtroom, commemorates this pioneering law which made Tuscany become a champion of human rights. In the year 2000 the Tuscan Regional Council decreed that November 30th should become an yearly Festa della Toscana: watch out for such celebrations throughout the region over the last weekend of November or visit www.consiglio.regione.toscana.it for details.
MORE
http://www.consiglio.regione.toscana.it/
Festa della Toscana