On the Move - Italy (11 of 23) - That Day
We managed to get out of the villa pretty early and make our way up to Firenze. By the way, for those who have asked, the Roman name for the town seems to have been Florentia, which explains why we call it Florence when the natives call it Firenze. The name went through various permutations, notably "Fiorenza," in the interim and "Firenze" seems to appear for the first time somewhere in the 16th century. But hey, they call our city "Londres," so there's some reciprocity there.
We parked behind the train station again and Jason headed for the Uffizi with his parents. I had decided that I didn't need a second visit there, so I went off on my own. I tried to visit the modern art museum in the Piazza della Signoria, but as luck would have it, they are closed on Tuesdays. So I visited the Palazzo Vecchio (fourth time's the charm!) and wandered through the many rooms designed by Vasari when the Medicis took over the city and moved into what had been city hall. Afterwards I did a little shopping--bought myself a lovely notebook covered in plain red leather--and sat in the piazza for a bit, right at the base of Cellini's Perseus. A pleasant older gentleman sat next to me for a while and tried to chat me up. I was quite pleased to find that I could understand his Italian pretty easily. He spoke Italian and I spoke a mixture of English and Spanish with my few Italian words dropped in and that seemed to work pretty well. He offered to show me around town, starting with a visit to his flat, but I explained that I was waiting for my husband and he moved off fairly quickly after that. In general, it was interesting how differently I was treated when I was on my own. No one grabbed me, but suddenly I got a whole lot of "Ciao, bella" from the men passing by.
For whatever reason, Florence was a lot more crowded this day than it had been previously. The piazza was really packed. I watched the mob for a while, surreptitiously checking out people's watches from time to time so that I knew when it was time to head over to Gusto to meet the others. Reunited, we had another good lunch there before walking over to San Lorenzo.
Piazza San Lorenzo is kind of a dive. There are vendors selling all the standard items (postcards, t-shirts, leather goods, etc.) around the foot of the church, and men wandering around selling knock-offs, sunglasses and scarves and offering drugs to everyone who passes by. The church is not much to look at from the outside, since the facade was never built and only the plain stone of the building's frame confronts the public.
Inside, the church is quite simple and lovely. The first chapel on this site was consecrated by St. Ambrose in 393, thirteen years after Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of the Roman Empire. The present building was designed by Brunelleschi and built during the early 15th century, while he was also in charge of the dome over at the Duomo. He created a new style of interior, called "creste e vele" for the "sails" of smooth, white plaster wall between the "waves" of the grey stone they call "pietra serena." The Medicis provided most of the funding for the construction and their mark is all over the church.
The first highlight of the nave is a pair of pulpits covered in bronze reliefs by Donatello showing scenes from the life of Christ on one and the Resurrection on the other. It's always interesting to develop enough of a mental catalogue of someone's work to have an opinion on them. I find that I'm not very fond of Donatello. Trish really enjoys his pieces, but I'm not a big fan of bronze to begin with and so many of his pieces are very frenetic. His Magdalena covered in hair at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo is really painful to behold. I can admire the artistry that can evoke such strong reactions across the centuries, but I can't really like the work.
I preferred the frescoes, an Annunciation scene painted by Filippo Lippi and the Life of St. Lawrence, by Bronzino. San Lorenzo angered his Roman overlords by responding to a demand to surrender "the treasures of the Church" by assembling as many poor people as he could find. Unamused, the Romans had him put to death by grilling him on a gridiron. He is reported to have told his torturers at one point that they could turn him over, as he was quite done on the one side. He is often depicted holding his gridiron--I find it interesting how attached the saints are to the instruments of their destruction, though I realize this is just an easy shorthand to help viewers recognize them. I've never really gotten the big deal about frescoes before, but understanding the technical challenges involved, seeing them in their proper places, and having so many to compare really made them special and interesting.
The Old Sacristy was also designed by Brunelleschi as a perfect cube with a hemispherical dome. It contains the tombs of Cosimo Medici's sons, Giovanni and Piero, and his parents, Giovanni and Picarda, founders of the Medici fortune.
The Capelle Medici are around the back of the church and require a separate entrance fee. The entry is through the crypt where more minor members of the Medici family have been buried. It was done rather haphazardly at first and the bodies were exhumed and re-buried with pavement stones denoting their tombs. Upstairs is the Chapel of the Princes, an enormous monument to the decadence of the later Medici, decorated with a variety of marbles and the huge, bombastic memorials to the grand dukes. As one of our guide books noted, "looking around this monument to a dynasty's decadent decline, it is hard to remember that earlier members of the same family were actually responsible for commissioning some of Europe's most sublime art."
The New Sacristy is a much smaller, calmer space, made even more intimate by the tower of plywood in the center protecting the space currently under renovation. This chapel was designed by Michaelangelo in a neo-classical style to house his tombs for Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother, Giuliano (murdered in the cathedral by the Pazzi Conspiracy), Lorenzo's grandson (Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino), and Lorenzo's son (Giuliano, Duke of Nemours). They are decorated with sculptures of Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day, and an unfinished Madonna and Child. It is sad that so much of Michaelangelo's work was unfinished, as he was distracted by other commissions and calls to Rome from various popes.
San Lorenzo is not far from the train station, so we walked over there and got on the bus up to Piazzale Michelangelo on the hill up behind the Otrarno district. A bronze copy of Michelangelo's David was placed there to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his birth. It looks out over a wonderful view of Florence and the Arno Valley.
After taking a ton of pictures from there, we walked on up the hill to San Miniato. Passing through the churchyard with some very ornate mausoleums, we entered the church just as the resident Benedictine monks were singing the evening service.
San Miniato is one of my favorite churches of the whole trip. It's a huge, Romanesque church, with the raised high altar at one end. Around the apse, behind the altar, are panels made of alabaster so thin that sunlight shines through them into the darkness of the church. The mosaic of Christ flanked by Mary and Miniato in the half-dome over the altar echoes the one on the facade of the church. Both date to the mid-13th century, when Italian mosaics were still very Byzantine in style and in both Jesus is seated on a big floppy oriental bolster.
Coming out of the church we were struck again by the lovely view of Florence, with the Duomo dominating the city. We took some time to appreciate that and to admire the geometrical pattern of green and white marble that forms the facade of the church before walking back down the long hill to the river.
We had wanted Trish & Steve to have the chance to eat at the Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco and this was the convenient time. Our meal was good, but somehow not quite as satisfying as the first one we had there. We ordered carpaccio, mixed salume and mixed bruschetta as antipasto. I had some vegetable soup, while the others split an order of their excellent porcini mushroom risotto. For mains, Jason got the chicken with ham & cheese, I had the veal parmigiana (with tomatoes and mozzarella), while Steve had the sliced beefsteak with arugula. The guy sitting next to us was smoking cigarillos, so we passed on dessert and headed out into the street.
A group of people were passing and when they heard our voices, they asked if we were Americans. We said yes and they asked if we'd been glued to CNN all day, as they were. We said no, what's the big news, and they began to tell us that the World Trade Center had been destroyed by hijacked planes. We ran down the street, trying to think where we could get to a TV and passed an internet place. We ducked in there and walked down the row of computers, looking over people's shoulders at the pictures of the attack. There were a pair of Australian women surfing through the news who let us watch and begin to get the story. Eventually we bought access cards of our own and logged on to check our email and send out word that we had heard and that we were fine. It was wonderful to see the flood of messages from my friends on the "suspects" list not only alerting each other to developments, but trying to figure out whether we were all okay and how people could help, offering information on blood donation and bed space for travellers stranded in various cities. Finally we tore ourselves away from the screen and walked back to our car. Along the way Trish noticed a guy selling newspapers with headlines about the attack. They were in Italian, but she decided to get one anyway and when she asked how much, the guy said "You are American? Then it is free."
We got back to Il Doccio and the man from the other apartment came out to make sure we had heard the news. We hadn't figured out how to use our TV yet, so he came in to help us with that. Then we sat glued to the station showing CNBC--the only English channel we had--for the next several hours, until the news began to repeat itself and we stumbled to bed, still stunned by the shock of it.
We parked behind the train station again and Jason headed for the Uffizi with his parents. I had decided that I didn't need a second visit there, so I went off on my own. I tried to visit the modern art museum in the Piazza della Signoria, but as luck would have it, they are closed on Tuesdays. So I visited the Palazzo Vecchio (fourth time's the charm!) and wandered through the many rooms designed by Vasari when the Medicis took over the city and moved into what had been city hall. Afterwards I did a little shopping--bought myself a lovely notebook covered in plain red leather--and sat in the piazza for a bit, right at the base of Cellini's Perseus. A pleasant older gentleman sat next to me for a while and tried to chat me up. I was quite pleased to find that I could understand his Italian pretty easily. He spoke Italian and I spoke a mixture of English and Spanish with my few Italian words dropped in and that seemed to work pretty well. He offered to show me around town, starting with a visit to his flat, but I explained that I was waiting for my husband and he moved off fairly quickly after that. In general, it was interesting how differently I was treated when I was on my own. No one grabbed me, but suddenly I got a whole lot of "Ciao, bella" from the men passing by.
For whatever reason, Florence was a lot more crowded this day than it had been previously. The piazza was really packed. I watched the mob for a while, surreptitiously checking out people's watches from time to time so that I knew when it was time to head over to Gusto to meet the others. Reunited, we had another good lunch there before walking over to San Lorenzo.
Piazza San Lorenzo is kind of a dive. There are vendors selling all the standard items (postcards, t-shirts, leather goods, etc.) around the foot of the church, and men wandering around selling knock-offs, sunglasses and scarves and offering drugs to everyone who passes by. The church is not much to look at from the outside, since the facade was never built and only the plain stone of the building's frame confronts the public.
Inside, the church is quite simple and lovely. The first chapel on this site was consecrated by St. Ambrose in 393, thirteen years after Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of the Roman Empire. The present building was designed by Brunelleschi and built during the early 15th century, while he was also in charge of the dome over at the Duomo. He created a new style of interior, called "creste e vele" for the "sails" of smooth, white plaster wall between the "waves" of the grey stone they call "pietra serena." The Medicis provided most of the funding for the construction and their mark is all over the church.
The first highlight of the nave is a pair of pulpits covered in bronze reliefs by Donatello showing scenes from the life of Christ on one and the Resurrection on the other. It's always interesting to develop enough of a mental catalogue of someone's work to have an opinion on them. I find that I'm not very fond of Donatello. Trish really enjoys his pieces, but I'm not a big fan of bronze to begin with and so many of his pieces are very frenetic. His Magdalena covered in hair at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo is really painful to behold. I can admire the artistry that can evoke such strong reactions across the centuries, but I can't really like the work.
I preferred the frescoes, an Annunciation scene painted by Filippo Lippi and the Life of St. Lawrence, by Bronzino. San Lorenzo angered his Roman overlords by responding to a demand to surrender "the treasures of the Church" by assembling as many poor people as he could find. Unamused, the Romans had him put to death by grilling him on a gridiron. He is reported to have told his torturers at one point that they could turn him over, as he was quite done on the one side. He is often depicted holding his gridiron--I find it interesting how attached the saints are to the instruments of their destruction, though I realize this is just an easy shorthand to help viewers recognize them. I've never really gotten the big deal about frescoes before, but understanding the technical challenges involved, seeing them in their proper places, and having so many to compare really made them special and interesting.
The Old Sacristy was also designed by Brunelleschi as a perfect cube with a hemispherical dome. It contains the tombs of Cosimo Medici's sons, Giovanni and Piero, and his parents, Giovanni and Picarda, founders of the Medici fortune.
The Capelle Medici are around the back of the church and require a separate entrance fee. The entry is through the crypt where more minor members of the Medici family have been buried. It was done rather haphazardly at first and the bodies were exhumed and re-buried with pavement stones denoting their tombs. Upstairs is the Chapel of the Princes, an enormous monument to the decadence of the later Medici, decorated with a variety of marbles and the huge, bombastic memorials to the grand dukes. As one of our guide books noted, "looking around this monument to a dynasty's decadent decline, it is hard to remember that earlier members of the same family were actually responsible for commissioning some of Europe's most sublime art."
The New Sacristy is a much smaller, calmer space, made even more intimate by the tower of plywood in the center protecting the space currently under renovation. This chapel was designed by Michaelangelo in a neo-classical style to house his tombs for Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother, Giuliano (murdered in the cathedral by the Pazzi Conspiracy), Lorenzo's grandson (Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino), and Lorenzo's son (Giuliano, Duke of Nemours). They are decorated with sculptures of Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day, and an unfinished Madonna and Child. It is sad that so much of Michaelangelo's work was unfinished, as he was distracted by other commissions and calls to Rome from various popes.
San Lorenzo is not far from the train station, so we walked over there and got on the bus up to Piazzale Michelangelo on the hill up behind the Otrarno district. A bronze copy of Michelangelo's David was placed there to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his birth. It looks out over a wonderful view of Florence and the Arno Valley.
After taking a ton of pictures from there, we walked on up the hill to San Miniato. Passing through the churchyard with some very ornate mausoleums, we entered the church just as the resident Benedictine monks were singing the evening service.
San Miniato is one of my favorite churches of the whole trip. It's a huge, Romanesque church, with the raised high altar at one end. Around the apse, behind the altar, are panels made of alabaster so thin that sunlight shines through them into the darkness of the church. The mosaic of Christ flanked by Mary and Miniato in the half-dome over the altar echoes the one on the facade of the church. Both date to the mid-13th century, when Italian mosaics were still very Byzantine in style and in both Jesus is seated on a big floppy oriental bolster.
Coming out of the church we were struck again by the lovely view of Florence, with the Duomo dominating the city. We took some time to appreciate that and to admire the geometrical pattern of green and white marble that forms the facade of the church before walking back down the long hill to the river.
We had wanted Trish & Steve to have the chance to eat at the Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco and this was the convenient time. Our meal was good, but somehow not quite as satisfying as the first one we had there. We ordered carpaccio, mixed salume and mixed bruschetta as antipasto. I had some vegetable soup, while the others split an order of their excellent porcini mushroom risotto. For mains, Jason got the chicken with ham & cheese, I had the veal parmigiana (with tomatoes and mozzarella), while Steve had the sliced beefsteak with arugula. The guy sitting next to us was smoking cigarillos, so we passed on dessert and headed out into the street.
A group of people were passing and when they heard our voices, they asked if we were Americans. We said yes and they asked if we'd been glued to CNN all day, as they were. We said no, what's the big news, and they began to tell us that the World Trade Center had been destroyed by hijacked planes. We ran down the street, trying to think where we could get to a TV and passed an internet place. We ducked in there and walked down the row of computers, looking over people's shoulders at the pictures of the attack. There were a pair of Australian women surfing through the news who let us watch and begin to get the story. Eventually we bought access cards of our own and logged on to check our email and send out word that we had heard and that we were fine. It was wonderful to see the flood of messages from my friends on the "suspects" list not only alerting each other to developments, but trying to figure out whether we were all okay and how people could help, offering information on blood donation and bed space for travellers stranded in various cities. Finally we tore ourselves away from the screen and walked back to our car. Along the way Trish noticed a guy selling newspapers with headlines about the attack. They were in Italian, but she decided to get one anyway and when she asked how much, the guy said "You are American? Then it is free."
We got back to Il Doccio and the man from the other apartment came out to make sure we had heard the news. We hadn't figured out how to use our TV yet, so he came in to help us with that. Then we sat glued to the station showing CNBC--the only English channel we had--for the next several hours, until the news began to repeat itself and we stumbled to bed, still stunned by the shock of it.