Cradle of the Renaissance: History, Art, and Choices

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how had a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Commedy

Musings

When we started planning for this trip, Silvia told us, “One month, two months – this is not enough to see Italy. You will need to make choices.” Relaxing by the pool, it is easy to soak-in the Tuscan sun and breathe-in the rolling countryside. Dipping a toe into Italy’s torrent of history, cultural centers, food, agriculture, art, and architecture is to invite the long fall into the rabbit hole of too much. What is the depth of my curiosity? I suspect it’s not enough to do justice to the world of discovery available in this beautiful country.

“You will need to make choices.”

Into the Heart of Firenze

One choice we made was to spend a single day in Florence – the heart of the Renaissance and a crown jewel in Italy’s cultural, political, architectural, religious, and artistic past. Villa I Barranonci is beautifully situated in San Casciano to be 30-45 minutes from a number of great excursions in Tuscany. Balancing variety with depth was the challenge and we knew the day in Florence was going to be a lot mentally and physically.

The drive into the city only took about 30 minutes and traffics wasn’t as bad as I expected. Florence is a city of 380,000 with a total metro population of just under a million. Our plan was to park our car at a garage and meet our guide for a full day’s walk around the city center. As we progressed on our drive, I was surprised to learn that our garage was not on the outskirts but in the heart of Florence’s city center.

For those of us in the United States who are accustomed to massive highways, nice wide city streets, and large, high ceiled parking garages, it is difficult to comprehend the dynamic of driving in the narrow alleys of these medieval cities. We arrived at our designated garage to learn that it was full. The attendant was kind enough to direct us to a garage “around the corner” but that was only the beginning of a relatively brief parking adventure that included a turn down a pedestrian street (including the local waving his hands in a no-no pattern), backing into aggressive rush hour traffic to escape that mistake, two turns on one way streets in the wrong direction, the standard alley squeezing as we followed Parking signs to nowhere, and finally a lifeline call to Silvia for directions to another garage which was literally a four car room on an alley that only slightly grimaced when we pulled our SUV into it. Shout-out to Sally my navigator – I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a great co-pilot in such situations.

I’m laughing to myself as I write this and am grateful that no tourists or small animals were injured in the filming of this comedy.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Elisa, our guide for the day, was kind enough to walk to us at our garage and the tour began. “Before we go, please tell me what you’d like to see.” “We’d like to see the inside of the Duomo.” “No, you don’t,” she replied. I knew instantly we had the right person. As much as the information and direction has been amazing from these guides, one of their greatest values has been to help us triage our visit to avoid wasting time. She went on to tell us that the line to get into the Duomo is normally about 2 hours.

We had pre-purchased tickets to the Uffizi and Accademia Galleries with specific entry times and knew we had to work around those museums. Silvia had guided us on those purchases which need to be made about 2 months before arriving. Travelers note: many of the tourist highlights in Italy require such pre-purchases – we will miss a few things because I didn’t think to ask.

Elisa walked us to the Piazza dell Signoria, a centerpiece of Florentine history and culture, holding the Palazzo Vecchio which has been Florence’s City Hall since the Middle Ages. Attached to the Palazzo is the Galleria della Uffizi, one of the largest museums in the world (we’ll get to that in a moment). Florence’s history as a city state, capital of Italy (at one time), source of the Italian dialect that is the common tongue in Italy, and incredible concentration of Renaissance genius makes it a wildly fascinating study in human progress (and regress), triumph, tragedy, and inspiration on the world stage.

Florence’s history is entwined with the Medici name and this powerful family’s ambition and influence underpinned the City’s rise to prominence as a center of Renaissance enlightenment. We walked to the Ponte Vecchio, the only remaining medieval bridge over the River Arno and still a hub of activity for jewelry stores and tourists. Like the Arno’s flood of 1966 which put central Florence under 22 feet of water, we found ourselves awash in a river of names, dates, and points of interest. Every corner of this city has story and some have dozens.

Uffizi

As we were walking to Uffizi, Elisa stopped to show us a curious building with a crack going up its six or seven stories and the difference in the stone on each side of the crack. We learned that half of this building was destroyed in a Sicilian mob bombing in 1993 that killed five people. There is a beautiful sculpture of a an olive tree commemorating the attack and the building was intentionally rebuilt on the one side with the crack intact to mark the event.

The Uffizi was originally a government building built by the Medici’s that was converted to a museum to hold the Medici art collection that was donated to Florence in the 1700’s by the last of the Medici line. Today it is 139,000 square feet of amazing with works from Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giotto, Raphael, and Caravaggio (to name a few). Elisa helped us navigate the massive galleria, making some key choices on priorities.

The crowds and our time constraints made it impossible to give these works the contemplation they are due but we were able to stand before them, see the brush strokes, the color, and the use of shade and light to create timeless pieces worthy of contemplation. Above I have shown pictures of Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and van Honthorst paintings.

The Duomo

After the Uffizi, we had lunch and then made our way over to the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower). Turning a corner we came upon the massive Cathedral towering over us and seeming incredibly outsized for everything else around it. Pictures cannot properly capture the scale of the structure or its beauty. Complete in 1436, the dome is an engineering marvel that took 50 years and at least three architects to figure out. The Cathedral is still active and outside of it sits a massive Baptistry that served as the Baptismal font for hundreds of years.

Galleria dell Accademia

We were now getting later in the day and had two key stops left: the Accademia and Santa Croce. Even with a ticket and reservation, we still had to wait about 20 minutes to get into the Accademia. This gallery gets about 1.4 million visitors a year (the Uffizi receives about 2 million) and has a wonderful collection of paintings from Florentine artists. However, we were there to see Michelangelo’s David.

I have seen photos of this iconic sculpture but standing in front of it was overwhelming. The 17 foot marble sculpture is stunningly beautiful and the detail is hard to comprehend. Originally displayed in the Piazza della Signoria, it was moved to the Accademia in 1873 and is the centerpiece of the gallery. Unlike other sculptors, Michelangelo did not do clay models or sketches. He viewed the sculpting process as the act of revealing what already existed within a block of marble. Amazing.

Walking to the Finish

Elisa had discouraged the wait for the Duomo and suggested that Santa Croce would be a better cathedral to visit on the inside. Our last stretch of walking was about a mile to the cathedral. We still had to wait for about 20 minutes to get into Santa Croce but were able to explore it for about an hour before it closed.

The church was lovely but not as ornate as some others we’ve seen. Several things struck me about Santa Croce. Firstly, we had to pay to enter it. The act of paying to enter a church changes something about – at least for me. Unlike many of the others we’ve seen, this one very much felt like a museum. Secondly, there were beautiful paintings and sculptures but the altar almost felt secondary to the extensive number of side altars which were basically crypts to rich and/or famous Florentines.

The floor of the church was lined with massive stone carvings – crypt covers to whoever was buried underneath. Walking around the church felt like walking through a beautiful cemetery. Along the walls were massive tombstones in the forms of beautiful carvings or paintings. Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Dante and Da Vinci had massive displays over their graves – although neither Dante nor Da Vinci are buried in Florence. The communities here are deeply possessive of their famous sons and daughters.

The day was like drinking from a firehouse. Well, at least as I imagine it. Choices. We made choices on priorities and I think we did pretty well in seeing a great cross section of what Firenze had to offer. Elisa really helped us focus and gave fascinating color to an amazing city. For example, she pointed out a number of marble engravings with quotations from Dante’s The Divine Comed, placed about 20 feet above the street on buildings around the city. There are 54 of them around the city and they typically describe a resident of that particular building – something Dante spends extensive time on in his poem. So cool.

We made our way out of the city center without incident. Still contemplating our day yesterday, I consider all of the day’s discovery and my own capacity to absorb. As much as I want to see it all, hear more stories, and keep digging deeper, I wonder if the treasures of Florence (and much of the rest of Italy) are like a great book I like to return to, each time finding that something within it meets me exactly where I am.