On his way to be burned at the stake for heresy, at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, the philosopher Giordano Bruno has a wooden vise put on his tongue to prevent him continuing to speak.

Campo de' Fiori is a rectangular square south of Piazza Navona in Rome, Italy, at the border between the rioni Parione and Regola. It is diagonally southeast of the Palazzo della Cancelleria and one block northeast of the Palazzo Farnese. The name dates to the Middle Ages when the area was a meadow.

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astrologer, cosmological theorist, and esotericist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then-novel Copernican model. He practiced Hermeticism and gave a mystical stance to exploring the universe. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets (exoplanets), and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no center.

February 17 is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 317 days remain until the end of the year.