Fall Break- Florence

Yes, I'm still extremely behind on telling things... so here we go..

After the long train ride, we got into Florence in the late afternoon. We stayed at Hostel Harmony, which was behind the train station, but well priced and only about a 20 minute walk from the Duomo. The Duomo is this gigantic church that has the most intricate façade that I have seen. I could probably rock-climb up the front, if I was allowed. It’s right across from the Baptistery, with its famous golden door- it was made by Lorenzo Ghiberti, who competed against other artists for the right, and died even before it was finished.

We decided to do the Uffizi Museum and the Galleria, since it was getting dark out. The Galleria is actually a small covered section outside, with the originals of Perseus and Medusa and The Rape of the Sabine Woman. There were a few other sculptures there, but none of them were labeled, so I have no idea what they are or who they are by… which in unfortunate, since there is a pretty high chance that they’re famous somehow. That’s what I get for never taking an art history class…
The Uffizi Museum has a very large art collection from the Renaissance, so we were there until they closed. The two things that stuck out in that museum were the Birth of Venus, and la Primavera by Botticelli. There were a lot of works there by Vasari as well.

That night we headed back up the main street toward our hostel, but stopped off somewhere for dinner first. Yay for Italian food!!!! Later on we headed back out to meet some of Alex’s friends, who happened to be in Florence at the same time that we were. They took us to some Irish pub, which I was kind of annoyed about- I mean, we were in Italy, why weren’t we going to an Italian place? Oh well…

The next day we got up early and started off at the Medici Palace. The outside was actually not that impressive, but inside it was ridiculous. On the first floor they had some old Medici church stuff, which included a lot of reliquaries. There were two glass goblets, each with a vertebra in them, a glass and gilt box with an entire lower jaw, and a thin tube with what looked like an ulna suspended on the inside. Very strange. The next level of the palace was extremely opulent- it was the Medici’s private chapel, and now houses the remains of Lorenzo di Medici the Magnificent, the Medici who inspired Machiavelli’s The Prince. The sepulchers were adorned with sculptures by Michelangelo and others. The chapel was having renovations done, but it was still gorgeous, The whole walls were done in marble, with extremely oversized marble figures of Medicis in alcoves in the walls. I tried to take some pictures, but got yelled at ):

The leather market is right around the corner from the Medici Palace, so we walked through there on our way to the Duomo. We wandered around inside the Duomo for a bit, which was large, but much simpler than the outside. There was a huge line for going up to the Cuppola, the dome that covers the Duomo. The line only took about a half an hour, but the walk up the Duomo took just about as long- 463 stairs! I can’t believe this whole thing was constructed more or less by hand. The stairs to the top took you on a pathway around the inside of the Cuppola, so you could look down onto the people below, and the paintings on the ceiling were very close.
The top of the Cuppola was beautiful. It was small, with a small tower in the middle. All day it had actually been kind of rainy, but once we got to the top, it cleared up, there was a strong breeze and the sun was out. It was perfect, we got up there at 12, so all of the church bells across the city were ringing. The view was worth it- you could see the entire city, with the tiled roofs, the large churches off in the distance and the hills in the background.

Then we went to the Accademia Galleria, which was surprisingly relatively small, but the whole point of going was to see the David. I had no idea it was so big- I expected it to be maybe 8 or 9 feet tall. I had to sneak a few pictures of the David, since absolutely no pictures were allowed, and if a security guard saw you, they would take your camera and delete the photo. Afterwards we walked over to St. Croce church, which also has a pretty white façade. Inside there were the remains of Niccolo Machiavelli, Galileo, Michelangelo, Napoleon’s wife and Dante. Most of the carvings around their graves were done by Vasari.

It was getting sort of dark, so we finished off the day at the San Marco Museum, which is a converted 15th century convent and really pretty. It's got a ton of stuff on the inside, mostly done by people who I had never heard of though. Afterward we walked over to Pont Vecchio, which is a big crazy bridge that goes over the Arno. But it's like a bridge on steroids- it has small jewelry shops crowding both sides, so the bridge looks kind of like its going to fall down at any second. It would be a shame, considering all the jewelry on the thing. We just grabbed dinner at a grocery store, and sat by the river eating. It started to rain then, and we were exhausted, so we went back to the hostel to sleep and plan for Rome.