Flurries in Florence

The blogging has taken a backseat to thesis assignments and spring break plans, but just pretend that this post came two weeks ago…

Eight years ago, on my eighth grade trip to Italy, Florence was my absolute favorite. Being the cradle of the Italian Renaissance has its perks. And beautiful paintings from my most beloved era are a plenty, maybe even too much to handle all in one weekend.

As you can see from the previous post, it has been rather chilly in Italy of late, and this weekend was no exception. BITTER cold and WINDY… much like Kansas unfortunately.

We began with Marco at the Duomo. One of the most lively facades (although I like Orvieto’s better now), and incredible detailing. We also saw the Gates of Paradise Baptistery doors (replicas of Ghiberti’s competition-winning bronze doors)

The interior of the Duomo was nearly as cold, but just as grand (in scale but not in ornamentation).

The painted ceiling covering up poor Brunelleschi’s genius dome structure. I guess the painting is pretty cool too…

One of the coolest things I saw all weekend was the Opera studio. The Opera is the craftsmen’s guild in Florence and has been a tradition for 100s of years. Their “OPA” stamp is everywhere- on the tiled floor of the Duomo, pieced in the stained glass windows of the cupola, etc. But still today they continue this tradition and have a studio where craftsmen work on restoring sculpture pieces and creating replicas to be place in the original’s location.

We then went into Dante’s neighborhood (a native of Florence), went to his church and saw the outside of his house. Makes me want to get a refresher on my Divine Comedy reading.

This plaque was in Dante's neighborhood church. The red line shows the height that water reached during the 1966 flood of the Arno River... this was at least 5-6 feet off the ground...

We then went to Santa Croce, a very important Franciscan church in its day.

Wealthy families became patrons of the church in return for good burial spots inside the church. Thus the floor is COVERED with tombs of the wealthy families that shelled out the money to be buried there. Likewise, Santa Croce is also FILLED with famous Italians' tombs including Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, Leon Battista Alberti.

Right next to Santa Croce is the Pazzi Chapel (aka the personal chapel to the Pazzi family). It was even colder in here because the door was made out of a curtain, and its just hard cold stone everywhere. Famous, well designed, architectural stone, but very cold nonetheless. There courtyard here surrounded by cypress trees and loggias was also quite pretty.

After Marco ended his tour, my group went to the Opera Museum where there are hundreds of thousands of the original sculptures from the Duomo facade, interior, campanile (bell tower), and Baptistery (probably other places around Florence as well). It was very helpful that the sculptures were placed in the setting and placement as they originally were meant to be displayed. And there was a large wooden model of the facade that was used as a key to understand which sculptures were coming from where originally.

The museum also had a lot of the original wooden models and drawings of the Duomo's various facade design iterations. Some where full stories tall (that's without a laser cutter).

and of Brunelleschi's dome design. We just don't make models like this anymore.... Also on display were a lot of the huge old equipment and tools used to build the Duomo.

View from the Ponte Vecchio to the Arno River. This is the bridge that has all the fancy gold jewelry shops on it.

 

  The fake David outside the Palazzo Vecchio. We'll get to see the real thing in the Accademia in a few weeks.

 Being that Pinocchio was Italian... We found this cute little shop Bartolucci's (aka Gipeto's shop) where an Italian family of craftsmen make all these cool wooden toys and clocks.

We then climbed inside the dome of the Duomo (well worth the 8 euros). It was quite the hike, and the winding stairs became dizzying but it was amazing to walk between the two shell's of Brunelleschi's dome and even stairs up over the inner shell (below right). I found this graffiti on the wall, finally some worth while graffiti comments!


View from the balcony at the base of the cupola. We could see the paintings straight over our heads, each figure had to be at least 15 ft tall...

And what spectacular views (both from tiny windows inside the dome, and then on the very top of the dome outside)

We went to a Mexican restaurant (or the Italian version of Mexican food) one night. Nice to mix in some non-Italian food sometimes, although I haven't tired of Italian food yet.

I did go to a real Florence night club that night. It happened to be one of the one's that the Jersey Shore crew went to, "Space" (although I can't say I'm too proud of that). What a crazy, sketchy place, but it's good that I can say I experienced it once. 

That was our hostel... nope just kidding, it was across the street, but what a great location! This is the Palazzo Pitti (Palace of the Pitti family). And inside  is now the Palatine Gallery. Got to see many of the royal state-rooms. And then the gallery of Renaissance paintings... I swear they cover every square inch of wall space with paintings. It was so overwhelming, it was hard to truly appreciate any one painting over another. 

Overall a good but cold trip. Hopefully I'll hit up a few more of the museums and galleries I wanted to see next time we're in Florence in two weeks. Ciao for now!