It was dry and reasonably cool when we arrived, so we decided to walk from the station to our AirBnB. On the way there we walked through Piazza del Duomo, site of the Duomo di Firenze. The hexagonal building in the foreground is the Baptistery, which is separate from the Duomo itself. The Duomo is behind it. And enjoy the blue sky, which you won’t see again for a couple of days.
Since we’d arrived reasonably early, we had plans for the afternoon: visiting the Galleria dell’Accademia. We’d bought “skip the queue” tickets, which should really be called “skip a queue” – we avoided the (incredibly long) ticket line, but still had to wait half an hour to actually get in.
However, it was all worth it, in order to see Michelangelo’s masterpiece David in person.
Of course we’d seen pictures, but those don’t give any real sense of what it’s like standing in front of this enormous and extraordinarily graceful sculpture. And of course our pictures won’t either, despite Greg’s best efforts, so you’ll probably just have to go see it yourself.
Most people come to the Galleria just to see David, and we saw more than one tour group whisked in and then back out again in five minutes, without having looked at anything else. But the Galleria has many rooms of extraordinary art, including this sculpture gallery. We spent about two hours visiting the various rooms.
The far end of the gallery had a video exhibit demonstrating the Renaissance artists’ techniques for sculpting marble. Short version: sculpt from plaster first, either full-size or scaled-down, embed metal reference points in the plaster, and transfer the reference measurements to the marble. Here’s a close-up of the nearest statue in the previous picture, with the reference points visible as black dots. The gallery includes many plaster originals of famous pieces.
The Galleria also houses an exhibit of musical instruments, most originally owned by the House of Medici. This is a tenor viola fabricated by Antonio Stradivari in 1690. Once a common part of string quartets, the tenor viola is now extremely rare.
These beautiful hurdy-gurdies are from the workshop of Jean Nicolas Lambert, made in 1775. Karen’s friend Alison, who plays hurdy-gurdy in Kingston’s Swamp Ward Orchestra, will no doubt be shocked to learn that the hurdy-gurdy is “an instrument no longer used today”, at least according to the curators of the Galleria.
The next day we focused on visiting the Duomo, and bought combination tickets that let us climb the bell tower and visit the main buildings and the museum. (There was another ticket that would also have let us climb the dome, but we figured one climb was plenty.)
The Duomo complex consists of three buildings: the Duomo itself, the bell tower, and the Baptistry. The Baptistery was built first, between 1059 and 1128, and is one of the oldest buildings in the city. The Duomo was built between 1296 and 1436, with the exterior façade left unfinished until 1885. The bell tower was built during construction of the Duomo, between 1334 and 1359.
The bell tower, formally known as Giotto’s Campanile, was designed by Giotto di Bondone, with modifications by Francesco Talenti. The double windows and upper platform are Talenti’s; Giotto’s original plans had smaller windows and a spire at the tower’s top. Construction of the tower was interrupted for some years by the Black Death. The tower is 84.7 metres tall and approximately 15 metres wide, and has been described as “the most eloquent example of 14th century Gothic architecture in Florence, combining a strong vertical thrust with the principle of sound solidity.”
As one of the highest points in central Florence, the tower provides spectacular views of the old city.
The large building with the square tower is Palazzo Vecchio, the old city hall.
Of course the view from the top is only part of the story; this is what the inside of the tower looks like.
The original intent was that the Duomo complex would be sheathed in white and black marble with red accents. However, black marble was simply not to be found, so a dark green marble was used instead. The carvings and the intricacy of the marble inlays on the exterior walls are breathtaking.
The Duomo is topped by the Brunelleschi Dome. Finished in 1436, it was the first octagonal dome to have been built without a wooden supporting structure and remains the largest brick vault in the world.
The interior of the Duomo is accessible for free, but the line is extremely long. Our combination ticket included the archaeological site beneath the building. Since this is accessed from the interior via a separate entrance, we got to skip that line entirely. Compared to the beautifully-ornamented exterior, the interior of the Duomo is mostly quite plain.
The archaeological exhibit under the Duomo describes the various buildings that have been on the site over time, and shows the many phases of its construction.
From the Duomo we went to tour the Baptistery. This is a separate building from the Duomo, and is itself considered a minor Basilica. The theory is that one is first baptized before entering the church itself, and until 1935 this was the only building in which citizens of Florence were baptized. As you can see from this entrance, the Baptistery is even more ornately decorated than the Duomo. This is a replica door; the originals are now in the museum.
The ceiling of the Baptistery is covered by a spectacular mosaic. Unfortunately the mosaic is entirely obscured by scaffolding and tarpaulins, as a multi-year restoration and conservation effort is in progress. Smaller mosaics on the walls…
… and under the arches give a sense of what the ceiling must look like. Wikipedia has a photo of the dome’s mosaic.
After viewing the Baptistery we headed into town to do some necessary shopping and had an excellent early dinner at Le Cappelle Medicee. Then we returned to the Duomo to visit its museum, which includes items deemed too valuable to remain on the exterior of the building (and therefore replaced with replicas) as well as items that have worn out and been replaced by duplicates. This permits a much closer view of some objects than would otherwise have been possible.
The east wall of the Duomo includes representations of various professions, carved in the workshop of Andrea Pisano about 1350. The originals are now in the museum. We managed to find the professions of each of our kids represented amongst them. Left to right: metalworking (Tristan, welder), medicine (Shona, nurse practitioner), and grammar and rhetoric (Jared, writer and editor). We were unable to find either a bellydance teacher or a software engineer, so that’s us out.
The Baptistery’s three original gilded doors are also in the museum.
On the Saturday we decided to walk a loop through the old city, across the river, up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, then back via the Ponte Vecchio and past the Palazzo Vecchio.
This is the Basilica di Santa Croce. There was a fee to visit the interior, and we’d just paid to visit the Duomo the day before, so we skipped that. Unlike the Duomo, only the front is faced with marble, the other walls being bare brick. This seems to be the gothic equivalent of today’s suburban houses with brick fronts and vinyl siding on the rest.
At the corner of the Basilica is a modest statue of poet Dante Alighieri, author of the Inferno. To show just how modest, we have Karen for scale.
We crossed the river and climbed to the Piazzale Michelangelo, stopping for a while under a tree when the heavens completely opened up on us. The Piazzale offers wonderful views of the old city. Behind us in the distance you can see the square tower of the Palazzo Vecchio and the dome the the Duomo.
Here’s a zoomed-in shot, showing those buildings more clearly.
A view along the Arno River, with the famous Ponte Vecchio.
One of the main features of the Piazzale Michelangelo is a full-size bronze replica of the David statue, crapped-up (in our humble opinion) by the addition of other statues on its plinth.
We walked down the hill from the Piazzale through the medieval streets.
Along the way we passed the Cantina Capponi, a medieval wine bar featuring a small porthole for handing you your drink during plague times. We’re not sure whether it was in active use during the most recent pandemic.
Here’s a closer view of the Ponte Vecchio. As you can see, it is built up the entire way across, much like London Bridge back in the seventeenth century.
And here we’re walking across the Ponte Vecchio. Can you tell we’re on a bridge? I thought not.
You can probably tell that it was still raining, though.
After stopping for another very nice early dinner at Ristorante il Recettario we continued on the Palazzo Vecchio.
The Palazzo features a large outdoor sculpture gallery, including the original Abduction of a Sabine Woman. The plaster model is on dislay in the Galleria dell’Accademia.
This Neptune fountain was particularly imposing.
At the Palazzo is a full-sized marble replica of Michelangelo’s David. This is where the original stood from June 1504 until August 1873, when it was moved into the Galleria Academia to protect it from the elements. Since the statue is 5.17 metres high and weighs 8.5 tons, this was a bit of a delicate undertaking, requiring twelve days. Recent investigations have shown that the original has weak ankles and that tilting it 15º would be enough to destroy it.
The Palazzo is used as an event space and admission is restricted. However, its beautifully decorated entrance courtyard is open to the public.
Our original plan for Florence had included a day-trip to Pisa by train. However, our friend Doreen, who lived in Tuscany for several years, suggested that a visit to the medieval town of San Gimignano would be more interesting.
Initially it didn’t look like San Gimignano would be practical, as the trip would have required an hour and a half on a bus each way with a change in the middle. That struck us as a bit too risky, so we shelved the idea. However, on the Saturday evening Greg found a self-guided bus tour from Florence that included San Gimignano (plus Siena and Monteriggioni) and was on sale at 40% off – so we booked ourselves on that.
The first stop on the tour was Sienna. Our guide brought us to Piazza Salimbeni which is where we were to meet her at the appointed hour. While we were getting ourselves organized, a unit of Italian airborne soldiers marched past, preceded by a brass band.
We followed them down to Piazza del Campo, the main square of old Siena, which had clearly been set up for a parade of some sort. We didn’t have time to stick around, so we never actually found out what was up.
From the Piazza we walked up to the Duomo di Siena, built between 1215 and 1264 with the façade completed by about 1370. Take that, Florence!
We didn’t visit the interior, but were able to look in through the central door. Unlike the Florence Duomo, the Siena Duomo’s interior design echoes the polychrome marble of its exterior.
We continued wandering the old town of Siena, which is quite hilly.
In fact, it’s so hilly that several of the restaurants had tables and stools with specially-cut legs for sitting on the slopes.
From Siena we continued into the Monteriggioni region, where we first visited the Lornano Chianti Classico winery.
The visit included a tour of the production facilities and cellars, plus a guided tasting of four of their wines. There was a power outage in the entire village during our visit, so we toured the cellars by flashlight.
We continued on to Monteriggioni itself. This is a walled medieval hill town, build between 1214 and 1291 as a Sienese fortress against the Florentines. Wikipedia has a terrific aerial view.
The town is quite small and beautifully preserved, with restaurants, craft shops, and gelaterias.
This is the view from the main gate of Monteriggioni. It shows the three plant species characteristic of Tuscany: grape vines (lower left), olive trees (dusty green, scattered throughout), and the tall conical cypress trees (on the hilltop), which are an official emblem of the region.
From Monteriggioni we continued on to San Gimignano, another walled medieval town. Once again, Wikipedia has a lovely panoramic view of the town. This is part of the central square, Piazza della Cisterna.
Doreen was absolutely right to have recommended we visit: San Gimignano is breathtakingly beautiful.
San Gimignano is known as “the town of fine towers” because almost all of its medieval tower homes have been preserved. Here you can see five of the remaining dozen or so towers.
Here’s another view of the medieval streets of San Gimignano, showing more of the towers.
On our way out of town we stopped at Gelateria Dondoni in Piazza della Cisterna, which bills itself as a “world gelato champion” and which some feel has the best gelato anywhere. We braved the enormous queues and tried some of their specialty flavours. While we wouldn’t call ourselves gelato experts, it was definitely delicious and definitely worth the long wait and the (somewhat expensive) price.
Heading down to the bus we were treated to this glorious sunset. Then it was back to Florence for dinner in the apartment and packing up for the next day’s journey to Genoa.
