Day four: Florence

What a beautiful city this is!! It was a nice cool morning and we enjoyed a nice breakfast in the hotel before heading out on our tour. I usually don’t do tours, but after my wonderful tour experience in the Vatican Museum, I was easily talked into a walking tour of Florence, The Uffizi and Accademia. I’m so glad we did as the guides were fabulous! We started off around 5 minutes from the hotel with Freya from Australia. She was rather perky and lots of fun. We started the tour in Republic Square, where Italy offically became a republic. It was torn down (orinally was the Jewish Ghetto, and a marketplace, but was demolished to accommodate a ‘grand area’ when Florence was the capital of italy. Florence was the birthplace of the renaissance, in part because of the wealth in the region. Florentines made their money on making clocks and banking and were among the wealthiest of areas in Europe in the early 1300s. They were not royalty, but very wealthy merchants and as a result, rose to power.

We were told about the Santa Maria Novella Church façade which was a really interesting example of “advertising” from back in the day. The painting on the side actually says that “I xxx paid for this in 1417” (I of course, forget the person’s name!) We saw an interesting building that had three levels, but the windows on each level were different sizes! It showed the lack of planning during the early Renaissance period.

In the 1400s for several hundred years the Medici family ruled Florence, and the representation of them is everywhere. Their coat of arms is on many buildings. We saw a church from the same period next to a building where Dante wrote ‘The Divine Comedy” and there’s a relief of him above the door. The church was quite interesting and we spent a lot of time there. It was built in the 1200s as a church on the bottom floor, and the upper floor was for grain storage. The building was deemed to not be attractive enough for the church, so the leadership of the time set a contest for the 20 trade guilds to each take 20 years to design a sculpture niche. Several were pointed out, and one in particular from Donatello which had an oversized head because it was going to be higher up on the building and the location would make it look smaller than actual. Apparently it was not approved of initially until it was placed in the location, and then it did look appropriate. Freya, the guide, explained that the Renaissance was the ‘rebirth of Man” and humanism, and they integrated math with art to make things look more realistic and in proportion. She pointed out various things throughout the city that actually showed the learning of the artists at the time.

Another amusing building was the Palazzo Strossi, the ‘archnemesis’ of the Medici. Their building had beautiful stone walls, but in actuality they were a veneer. The family owned the building next door, so only three walls have the veneer—the fourth, next to their other building, was hidden and therefore not covered with the better looking stone! It’s now exposed so you can see the difference. Freya also told us that there are wine bars that are so small in Florence that people need to buy their drink, and drink it on the street. The cultural significance is that the wealthy families would bring in food and wine from their country estates, and if there was extra that the family couldn’t eat, they would sell it on the street. It’s apparently a very Florentine thing to do!

We went to a beautiful church (the name escapes me, unfortunately) that had several types of architecture in it. Frescoes were done on many walls, which was done in Florence and not venice due to the climate. It’s a very difficult technique because the paint is imbedded in the freshly laid plaster. It lasts a long time, but took a long time to do. She told us an interesting story about Salonbeni Bartollini, who was the head of a fabric family. HE heard a big shipment was coming in, and decided to take advantage of the situation. He threw a big party, got all of his friends and competitors drunk, spiked their drinks with opium. As a result, the Bertollini family was the only one to greet the boats at the docks, and they amassed a fortune as a result. The funniest part was that they changed their family crest to include poppies!


We then walked over the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge. It was at the narrowest part of the river, and was the only crossing until 1300. The bridges were always wood but in 1333 this bridge was built of stone due to the frequent floods. All of the bridges to Florence were bombed in WWII except for this bridge, however, instead the buildings on both sides of the bridge were bombed to hold the advance of the Allies. Only gold is sold on the bridge for the last 500 years. The Medici family bought the Pitti Palace in Oltrarno, or “across the arno” river. The butchers used to clean their meats, etc. by the river, and the Medici didn’t want to walk past that to cross the river. So they had a private corridor built above the bridge so they wouldn’t have to walk with the commons! It leads across the river to the Uffizi, which was their office space. They actually tore out the front of many of the homes along the river to build the corridor!!

We walked to the town square near the uffizi, and I gave away the ticket I had purchased for the Uffizi since the tour included a ticket. I made someone quite happy and he thanked me profusely! I had to laugh because I thought it only had my email address which is sam.. so I figured it would be fine. He looked at the ticket and said “my name is Samantha”? Oops. He didn’t think it would matter nor did I, as I’m sure if it’s a prepaid ticket they won’t check ID. We saw some amazing statues of Perseus holding Medusa’s head, Neptune, etc. and the original spot where the David was installed before it was moved to the Accademia Museum. David represents the overthrow of the Medici.. we learned about the family member who was a monk who came into power. He’s behind the story of the “bonfire of the vanities’ where in an attempt to go back to the more religious lifestyle, he pushed people to burn all artistic things in the square. Four years later, he became the fuel on the bonfire, and a plaque marks the spot where the ‘mad monk’ was killed. This was the political center of Florence a little over 500 years ago.

We saw a semi-circle building which is the only one in existence now. It was built on a roman structure, of a roman bath. It’s now a 4 star hotel! It’s called a straw tower, because a women’s prison was occupying it, where the women laid on straw. Then we continued on to the duomo, which was the largest cathedral in the 1300s and larger that St. Peters in Rome. It’s green and white marble and moorish in design, reminding me of Cordoba a bit. It was the largest dome in the modern world, modeled after the Pantheon. It was a beautiful inside as well, and we were awash with a sea of turquoise wraps (like the pink wraps in the San Marco Bascilica, which we swore were tablecloths very similar to a restaurant we ate in! Here they were light blue.) Women had to have their shoulders covered, but they were less stringent on showing knees and feet. How funny. There was a beautiful little building (little being in perspective!) across the way from the Duomo in the same granite, which is the bapstry. In ancient times, you couldn’t enter a church unless you were baptised. So it was right across the street so you could be baptised, and then enter the church. The dome is symbolic of heaven to continue the theme. The dome was built in the 1420s by Romaneski, who was a mathematician. The picture in the top is a fresco, and the dome was reinforced much like a wine barrel is with lateral and vertical reinforcements on the inside of the dome between two walls (essentially walls, anyways.) You can see some of the vertical support structures on the outside, but none inside.

Following that tour we went to get lunch at a place Freya recommended. We had the best paninis that we’ve had. The bread was toasted and crunchy and thick, and the insides fabulous. Both were cheese, ad one had parmiagano, tartufo and salsa (fresh tomatoes and truffles) and the other pecorino, pesto, tapenade and memodori secchio (cheese, olive tapenade and pesto.) Yum!! We then made our way to the Uffizi for that tour. We saw some major works of art including Boticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ and ‘La Primavera’, along with interesting stories about the model in both being Amerigo Vespucci’s sister. 3 DaVincis (of 20 total) including the ‘Adoration of the Magi’, ‘Baptism of Christ’ and another. The Uffizi has the only easel painting by Michelangelo, who saw himself as a sculptor and only painted the Sistine Chapel because the pope at the time demanded it. This painting that he did was largely for the commission, but apparently it was rather scandalous back in the day. He was asked to paint a religious painting, which he did. However, there were nudes in the back. Apparently it was ok to paint religious works, or nudes, but not both. Well, he claimed to have painted a portrait of John the Baptist in it, and that the nudes in the background were actually awaiting baptism, so it was deemed to be ok!

The Rafael room had several works, including one of the Popes whom he was friends with (Pope Leo, Giovanni de Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent.) Rafael apparently had pretty strong connections! The ‘Venus of Urbino’ by Tiziano Vecellio was also there. I wasn’t familiar with the name, but the painting is certainly recognizable and is a nude of a young woman reclining on a rumpled bed. It was apparently quite scandalous in the day due to the pose, the red bed under the white sheet the red roses in her hand (all very symbolic) and the ‘look in her eye.’ It was believed to be a portrait of the young wife of the person who commissioned the painting (who were 12 and 40+ respectively.) The guide ended with a comment about ending a tour in a wonderful museum with historic porn. :o)

We then went to Accademia to see the David, and saw some wonderful partially completed marble sculptures done by Michelangelo that I thought were quite amazing. It was as if they were trying to escape from the marble! The guide told us Michelangelo had said that he carved directly into the stone to let the image out, which many of his contemporaries did wax and bronze or plaster molds. The David was commissions to be atop one of the smaller domes on the Duomo, but was moved to the ‘town hall’ piazza when it was completed. It was moved to the museum in the late 1900s due to deterioration.

There was an interesting music instrument display that we walked through quickly, but we were tired from walking all day and a bit ‘museumed out’ so decided to leave. During the day we were talking with a great gal named Nada who was traveling along, and we invited her for dinner. We had planned to do a pizzeria, but instead went to a place the guide recommended to her for drinks and snacky foods. She lives in Canada but is from Lebanon. We had such a great time talking with her that we’ll meet up with her tomorrow night (planned Pisa and will either do it in the late afternoon after she does a bike tour, or will meet her for dinner.) She will probably come with us on Thursday for our day trip to Siena. I do love foreign travel as you meet such wonderful people, and Kim is just as outgoing as I am!

Well, I’m pooped from the day and all this typing, so I’m signing off! We may do Pisa during the day, or else we’ll do some of the local touring in Florence..we’ll see how we feel when we get up. We’ve been pretty nonstop since arriving in Venice so we could use a slower day to really feel the city.
Sam