The Armchair Traveller

I have always had an attraction to Italy but in 3 years of living in London I still had not managed to get over there! I have many Italian friends and I spent many years at university studying Italian art history so when Mama and Lynsey said they were coming over to the UK to spend 5 weeks with me I had the perfect excuse to finally go to Italy! Mama and Lynsey had spent many years reading all my essays so they were also keen to share the Italian experience with me! YAY!

From the moment we got off the plane at Pisa Airport our Italian experience was everything we had hoped it would be plus more. We befriended an English University Professor in the queue to buy train tickets and rode all the way into Florence with him – he is a seasoned Italian traveller who was about to start his sabbatical in the Tuscan countryside.

Upon arrival at Florence train station Santa Maria Novella we said goodbye to our new friend and found our way to our accommodation “Hostel Sampaoli”. When we got there we were disappointed to find ourselves faced with two flights of the steepest and narrowest stairs I have ever seen (and there was no mention of this when I found the place and booked it). But eventually us and our luggage made it to the top (albeit huffing and puffing and ready to collapse). The next shock was the discovery that the hostel had double booked us and we were not going to be able to stay there! However, they had a room for us for the first night and had booked us into alternate accommodation around the corner at the same rate we were going to pay to stay here.

Riccardo the owner at Hostel Sampaoli was very friendly and gave us a map of the city marked with his recommendations of places to eat and places to visit and armed with this map we went off to do our first walk around Florence. The experience that made the biggest impression on me, and one that I will always remember, was walking down a street that night and turning a corner to be greeted by the monumental Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore). What a spectacular sight, the white and dark marble façade of the church was almost glowing in the dark surrounds and the red brick Duomo was a marvel to see. I was really in Florence – what a dream come true!

The next morning we checked into our new accommodation – Liberty Tourist Hotel which was only 1 flight of normal stairs and it turns out that the room we were in normally costs €130 per night but we were only paying €70!!!! This place was very nice.

After breakfast at a nearby cafe we began our self-guided walking tour of Firenze. We began with the Piazza San Marco just down the road from our accommodation and then continued on to the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata where the Innocenti Hospital is located – a children’s orphanage that was built in the 1400s by the brilliant Brunelleschi (who built the Duomo). On the façade, above each column is a ceramic tondo of a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, created by Andrea della Robbia, which represent the (now gone) wheel in the wall where parents could place their child and pass them into the orphanage without being seen. The piazza itself was a sleepy little piazza with a few locals crossing through on their way to somewhere else and surprisingly few tourists – so far so good I say.

On this morning we approached the Duomo from the back and walked around to the front of the building in order to really get an appreciation for just how massive this structure really is. The interior of the church was breathtaking for its sheer size! So much open space, it was almost overwhelming by it size and relative emptiness and simplicity, the Renaissance style is so strikingly different from the much more decorative Gothic style, for example Notre Dame in Paris. I found myself thinking that it must be such a wonderful experience to come here for mass on Sunday’s – the Sacred Heart Basilica in my home town of Wellington NZ is not even remotely comparable!!

Standing outside the front of the Duomo and looking up at the beautiful details of the façade it really strikes you as incredible how 500 years ago people didn’t have any of the technology that we have today and yet they built these monumental structures which have not only stood the test of time but are still functional. The baptistery opposite was also quite stunning and the reproduced “Gates of Paradise” by Ghiberti (the originals are in a nearby museum) were more impressive in reality than in pictures I have seen.

Walking past the Bargello Museum we made our way to the Piazza della Signoria home of the Palazzo Vecchio which is synonymous with the historically significant Medici family and is also the seat of Florence’s government since the 1300′s!!! The Palazzo Vecchio casts an impressive shadow over the piazza, so much Florentine history has happened both inside and in front of this building (such as the burning of Savonarola); it is surreal to stand here in this very space.

There is a life size copy of Michelangelo’s “David” outside the front of the Palazzo Vecchio and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by it; I found the nearby Giambologna statue of the “Rape of the Sabine Woman” a much more impressive sculpture. I understand the technical impressiveness of David, carved out of a single block of marble, and massive in scale, but ultimately it is just a static posed male nude, there isn’t anything particularly moving about the subject.

I was rather fascinated by the Fountain of Neptune nearby where many female tourists were posing in front of Neptune and getting rather excited by him – did they confuse him with David or is there some insider joke about Neptune that I am not aware of? Lynsey also found this flurry of excitement amusing, so we decided to join the crowds and Lynsey snapped a shot of me and Neptune – we hoped that looking at this later might enlighten us to the fuss but unfortunately many months later we are still in the dark on this one.

We got some sandwiches and found a spot on the sidewalk in the Piazza to have a quick lunch and put our feet up for a moment. We then had a brief moment of disorientation thinking we were headed towards the river only to discover we had gone in the total opposite direction. But this turned out to be a happy mistake as we stumbled across another building I had at the top of my must-see list – Orsanmichele. This medieval building was originally used as a grain store and in the 1400′s was converted into a chapel for the craft and trade guilds. In the late 14th century the Florence guilds were charged by the city to commission statues of their patron saints to be placed in the 14 exterior niches of the building. The richer guilds commissioned their works in Bronze while the others commissioned theirs in Marble. The results speak for themselves – divine! Nani di Banco’s marble “4 Crowned Saints” for the Stone and Wood workers guild, and Verrocchio’s bronze “Christ and St Thomas” for the guild of merchants are my two favourites.

Eventually we parted ways with Orsanmichele and went in the correct direction towards the Arno river, passing by the Uffizi Gallery. Once down on the riverside the view was amazing – the sun was shining directly on the infamous Ponte Vecchio and you could almost imagine what it must have been like in da Vinci’s time when this area was also full of people going about their day to day trades. It was at this point as well that I was suddenly confused as to how one of my oldest friends who spent 4 years living in Florence could ever have left here! How do you live anywhere else in the world after living here?

On the Ponte Vecchio it is not such an exciting place unless you are a really wealthy tourist as it is full of very pricey jewellery stores these days. The south side of the river is equally as charming as the north side and we spent a bit of time walking around from one street to the next just observing the buildings and the people, soaking up the Florentine vibe. We crossed back across the river a bit further down from the Ponte Vecchio at the Ponte Santa Triniata which offered some lovely photo opportunities of the Ponte Vecchio.

We then walked down to Santa Croce for gelato at a store recommended to us by my friend that had lived here for a few years – well worth the walk, very tasty! Dinner was next on the agenda and once we sat down it was very hard to get up again after the 10 solid hours of walking we had managed to do that day! But we still found the energy for an evening shopping trip in the San Lorenzo tourist markets on the way back to our accommodation – where mama got herself a very nice Italian leather jacket. We all slept very well that night!

We woke to day three feeling absolutely exhausted (after the previous day’s walking this wasn’t so surprising), and it was Mama’s birthday so it was a day to celebrate! We had breakfast in the San Lorenzo Markets and then stocked up on fresh fruit and nuts and headed off to Santa Maria Novella – another gorgeous Florentine church. The frescoes in this church were truly spectacular, in particular Masaccio’s “Trinity” – a marvel of perspective – and Ghirlandaio’s Tornabuoni Chapel which stopped me in my tracks. The floor to ceiling stories that filled this chapel’s walls were so beautiful and moving – painted over 500 years ago and yet still here, still relevant, still masterful.

It was a glorious October day outside and so when we left the church we sat down on the front steps in front of the main façade and enjoyed some time out in the sunshine. As we walked around the next corner we stumbled across “Officiana Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella” an apothecary that was founded by Dominican friars in 1221 and then opened to the general public in 1621! Inside it was just beautiful and how you might imagine an old-fashioned apothecary shop to have been. There was a perfume room, a herbs and tea room, a library, and even a mini museum of Italian majolica jars and medicine making equipment. The whole shop backed onto an internal loggia of the Santa Maria Novella Friary – you couldn’t access it but you could look into it.

After a quick look around the Piazza della Republica we decided to split up as mama and Lynsey wanted to do some shopping and to visit a bookbinder in his store that they had discovered the day before. I on the other hand wanted to go to the Palazzo Medici Riccardi – the impressive palace that was once the home of one of the most powerful families in Italy – the Medici. Inside the palace was everything I remembered from my studies plus more – the Medici Chapel with its floor to ceiling fresco cycle painted by Benozzo Gozzoli was vivid and bold and overwhelmingly impressive. The reception room known as “Luca Giordano’s Gallery” was another visual feast with its ornate baroque appearance – the highly decorative ceiling fresco and the wall of mirror painted with all sorts of decoration. Out in the garden it felt like you were out in the Tuscan countryside as seen in a typical tourist photo – the orange building, the green grass and the potted orange trees, the fountain and a large marble statue – it was hard to imagine that just on the other side of the garden wall was the bustling city streets of modern-day, inner-city, Florence!

The palace also had a Museum of Ancient Marbles housed below ground full of mainly Roman busts and heads, some of which were quite beautiful.

Saturday was our last full day in Florence and the main activity on the cards was the Uffizi Gallery. We had pre-booked our tickets the day before and so we arrived at the appointed time, breezed through security, checked in our bags and coats, and then it was off to explore. The horseshoe shaped gallery was spread over two densely packed floors and contained some of the most remarkable masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.

I could spend all day telling you in detail about pretty much every painting or drawing in the building but I will spare you that and will just list my best of the best highlights: Botticelli’s “Primavera” and “Birth of Venus”, Da Vinci’s “Annunciation” and his unfinished “Adoration of the Magi”, Gentile da Fabriano’s ” Adoration of the Magi”, the “Maesta” by Giotto, and the same subject by Duccio, Verrocchio’s “Baptism of Christ”, Michelangelo’s “Doni Tondo” and Raphael’s “Goldfinch Madonna”, and finally my absolute favourite, Giovanni Bellini’s drawing of the “Lamentation of Christ”. The main corridor which linked all the rooms was full of sculptures and interesting ceiling frescoes and exquisite views across the Arno river.

Five hours later we decided that we should probably leave the Uffizi, get some lunch and do some souvenir gift shopping in the markets – Christmas was not that far away after all and what better gift to give then something all the way from Florence Italy!

I then popped into the Church of San Lorenzo while Mama and Lynsey did some other things they wanted to do. This church was different again from all the other ones we had been in so far but no less impressive or beautiful.

My lasting impression of Florence will be the power and might of the Medici family. They do not rule Florence any longer (I think the Medici dynasty ended in 1737 when the last ruling Medici died without any heir) but their family symbol is still prominently displayed on the outside of many of Florence’s buildings and in amongst the frescoes on the ceilings of the churches and other buildings – a symbol of their ownership, of their influence, of their power. Almost 500 years after their greatest era they are still physically an important part of Florence – fascinating!

I wish we had got to spend longer in Florence, I still feel like there is so much more to discover and experience. I fell in love with Florence and it is heartbreaking to leave but now that I have had a taste I will have to come back again some time.

Arrivadeirci Firenze

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