OK, so fried eggs on toast can be a complicated thing! You really just have to adjust though – the tea was very nice! The bread is very heavy, (very, very heavy actually) and everything has a lot of sugar in it, the bread is sweet, the butter is sweet – but the eggs themselves were very yummy. And I didn’t burn the water!
We headed down to the bus stop and caught the little mini-bus into town. I didn’t think the bus would be able to pick up any more people than were already crammed onto it, but I think it’s a ‘if-the-doors-can-shut-it’s-ok” kind of thing. We jumped off just across from the Florence Cathedral. The Cathedral, Baptistry, and Campanile are all in a large plaza – and there were masses of people, everywhere. We joined the throngs of people with cameras pointed up, and took a heap of photos of the black and white buildings that make up the square. We wandered over to the Loggia del Bigallo (1358) which is where abandoned children were once left and then sent to foster homes if they remained unclaimed. We then joined the queues to get inside the Cathedral - Santa Maria Delle Fiore (Europe’s 4th largest church). So, some history first. The Cathedrals’ dome was finished in 1463 and the frescoes inside it of the Last Judgment were painted by Vasari (who did the paintings in Palazzo Vecchio) around 1572. The Campanile is clad in white, green, and pink Tuscan marble and was completed in 1359. You could go up the top of the Campanile here as well, but I really didn’t like the thought of the 300-odd stairs.
After about a 40 minute wait, we walked in through the main doors of the Cathedral, which was the first one that seemed to enforce the ‘no bare shoulders’ rule. The first thing I paid attention to was the floor – it was filled with fantastic mosaics with some very well worn tiles. The Cathedral itself was somewhat plain. The inside of the dome was fabulous, I think I like Vasari paintings. The only other thing that was noteworthy was a 1465 painting by Michelino over on one wall. It’s called “Dante explaining divine comedy’,and it shows the poet outside Florence against a backdrop of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise. On the greater scheme of things though, it was a pretty small painting and it had a very plain frame – we were getting used to the huge, heavy, elaborate frames that most paintings had in other cathedrals and churches.
We left the cathedral and headed over to the Baptisty. The bronze eastern doors were commissioned in 1401 to mark the city’s deliverance from the plague and they were labeled by Michelangelo as the “gate of paradise”. They show various biblical scenes/scriptural subjects including; Adam & Eve, The Drunkeness of Noah, Joseph sold into slavery, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. They are incredibly intricate and very beautiful, and attracted quite the crowd. Our travel book tells us that the doors are “often regarded as the first works of the renaissance”. The Baptista itself may date back to the 4th century, which would make it one of Florence’s oldest buildings, and many famous Florentines (like Dante) had been baptized there. This was a spectacular building – if you go to Florence, pass on the inside of the Cathedral and marvel at the ceiling of the Baptistry instead. A small round room, with an incredible dome, filled with 13th century mosaics telling the stories of the Last Judgment, with an enormous figure of Christ overlooking it all. It had a gold base, with all the mosaic pictures on top of that, so it gleamed and was totally captivating.
After getting sore necks from spending such a long time looking up, we decided it was time for a drink, and so we headed into Piazza Della Repubblica. This piazza is built on the site of the old Roman forum and has a huge triumphal arch that was added in the 1860s (not sure what it is celebrating though, sorry). The piazza was alive with people and cafes, and there was a carousel on one side, and a guy playing beautiful classical guitar on the other. (We walked past the carousel on our way back from somewhere later on, and I had to giggle at the paintings in the centre of it – can’t say I’ve seen a carousel with half naked women paintings anywhere in Australia). We found a little café and had a (bad) slice of pizza and a cold drink each. Mark got his daily espresso hit and so then we headed back out into the street with a little more energy.
We passed some artists doing chalk paintings on a street (the Mona Lisa and a Vermeer) and wandered into what has been a marketplace for hundreds of years. The goods were all a bit dodgy and nasty though, very tourist oriented, so we hightailed it out of there pretty quickly. We passed a big bronze statue of a boar, and like the church in… uhm... somewhere… the bronze was highly polished on parts due to people rubbing it as they passed. So the boars’ snout was very golden compared to the rest of him! We spent the next hour just wandering around the streets, looking at all the fabulous buildings – past the Palazzo Strozzi and all the wonderful designer stores.
Next up was Piazza Della Signoria. This square has been the heart of political and social life in Florence for centuries. Palazzo Vecchio is here (now the Town Hall) as well as some fabulous sculptures. It is the original place that Michelangelo’s ‘David’ stood (created as a symbol of triumph over tyranny) but it is now a copy that stands in its place. There is also Cellini’s ‘Perseus’, Giambologna’s ‘The Rape of the Sabine Women’ and a fabulous fountain ‘Fontana di Nettuno’ which commemorates Tuscan naval victories. We wandered around the statues admiring them all and then headed into the Palazzo. We had to wait a moment though as a bride and groom wandered out having just been married inside the Town Hall. I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that people get married in the Town Hall first as that is the civil side of things, and then they go on to the church wedding (or vise versa).
Up the stairs and into the Town Hall, and we entered a lovely airy courtyard that had a copy of Verrocchio’s ‘Putto’ fountain in the centre. The original was inside a small room in the Palace, and so we got to see that about an hour later. The courtyard was surrounded by arches, inside of which was covered in frescoes.
Beyond the courtyard were the rooms of Palazzo Vecchio. The palace was finished in 1322, but was heavily remodeled by Vasari around 1540 on the orders of the Medici Duke Cosimo I. If you like frescoes, this is the place to be! The palace is two stories high and it has been designed to reflect heaven and earth (in some manner). It is full of small rooms, which have been ‘dedicated’ to a Medici family member on the bottom floor, with the room directly above it on the top floor, ‘dedicated’ to a celestial being. All of Vasari’s paintings symbolize the qualities of the person/being the room is dedicated to. There is meant to be a connection between the two floors, so the qualities of the God’s and the mythology on the top floor, is meant to reflect the best qualities of the Medici room below it – a true connection between the Gods of the heavens and the Gods of the earth. Some of the frescoes, particularly on the top floor, were just breathtaking. It has made me want to buy a book to read the stories of the Roman Gods – looking at paintings of Hercules fighting the serpents makes me just want to know the associated stories.
I have jumped ahead a little by explaining the concept of the two floors of the palace, but before we entered the ‘apartments’, we walked through the Salone dei Cinquecento, the ‘Town Hall’ part of the building. This was an enormous room, lined with huge paintings depicting Florentine victories, with a paneled ceiling with brilliantly rich and detailed oil painted frescoes. There were also lots of sculptures in the room, including Michelangelo’s ‘Victory’ (1525). It was very easy to imagine the citizens of Florence in this huge room, debating the most important issues of the day.
All in all, it took us a good couple of hours to wander around all the rooms here – each one more elaborate than the last. It was a fabulous building, one very much worth taking the time to explore. Like the Salone dei Cinquecento, it was very easy to imagine the Medici using, and living in, these rooms. There was even a little balcony on the top floor which looked out over Florence. I can imagine one of the Medici women standing out there listening to the sounds of Florence below, kind of wanting to get amongst it all, but then remembering that it was not good to mix with the smelly plebs!
Enough wandering for the day, and so we headed to a little restaurant around the corner and sat down to tagliatelle and lasagne, followed by the now familiar tiramisu and crème brulee. We obviously did well with wanting all the ‘local’ and ‘house specialty’ stuff, because the little old man who was our waiter (who I impressed no end with being able to say ‘how are you’ in Italian) decided that we should have the on-the-house limoncello again. Sheesh, there are some things that you just have to love, and being given that nod of approval for trying, via the limoncello, is always enjoyable.
Taxi back to the apartment time saw us head to the spot we got one from the day before. We came around the corner at the Ponte Vecchio to the most gorgeous sunset. Oranges and pinks that made everything look so romantic. We joined the other tourists taking a hundred photos – and it has made for one of the most memorable sunsets ever, I think!
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