Just a note before today’s note – If you click on any photo
in a post, a larger version of it will appear, along with thumbnails of each of
the other photos in that post. For some
reason, this feature was not working at the beginning of our trip and I was
unable to change the settings to enable it.
It’s functional now, and it also works on the earlier posts, and will
give you a better view of Tom’s pictures. As you know, once he gets home and
works his editing magic for his web albums, things get even better, but this
will improve viewing while we’re on the road. (For those family members who
receive our blog via email, I’m not sure that any of this applies; you may have
to access the blog online. Contact me if
you need the URL.)
We spent the day just “being” in Florence. With no
particular sites we wanted to visit, we were just interested in wandering
around the Centro Storico. It was fairly
chilly and overcast, so not a great day for panoramic photography of the city,
but fine for our rambles.
The exterior of the Duomo, with its green and white marble,
sculpted filigree, statuary and, of course, Brunelleschi’s amazing dome, is
always a stunner for us. Evidently,
purists scoff because the façade is a relatively modern facelift applied to the
original, but I guess we’re too simple to be condescending rather than
dismissive; we love it, and the way it looms over the piazza and dominates the
views from nearby streets. The interior
of the cathedral is less striking, and access to visitors is now routed around
the perimeter and kept far from the altar, the transept, and the area directly
under the dome.
Back in the piazza, the Baptistery and Ghiberti’s remarkable
bronze doors continued to attract crowds vying for a close-up view of the
amazing works.
We pretty much spent the day taking in the “usual suspects”
of Florence’s old center. A short walk
from the duomo brought us to the Orsanmichele Church, once a grain market, with
its rich sculptural exterior and a dark interior that glowed with a glorious
altarpiece of the Madonna and Child.
The Piazza Signoria is, on its own, a capsule summary of
Florentine history and culture, with the Palazzo Vecchio, the loggia filled
with sculptural treasures, the famous copy of Michelangelo’s David, Neptune fountain, bronze statue
of a Medici heir, plaque marking the site of Savonarola’s Bonfire of the
Vanities (and, ultimately, his own burning at the stake) and adjacent Uffizi
Gallery.
A short walk along the Arno, and we were at the Ponte Vecchio,
the only bridge in the city spared by the Nazis in World War II. Originally the province of butchers and
tradesmen, it was long ago taken over by jewelers, whose shops still line both
sides of the bridge.
We crossed bridge and walked for a bit in Oltrarno (other
side of the Arno) before heading back across the Arno and along the pedestrian
Via Tornabuoni, lined with swank designer shops, as well as the most enormous
potted azaleas we’ve ever seen.
After a walk through the loggia-bordered Piazza della
Repubblica and the covered Mercato Nuovo and the outdoor market at San Lorenzo
– stall upon stall of leather goods, t-shirts, souvenir thimbles, and other
“essentials”, we were back for some last views of the duomo and its dome.
We left Florence and headed for the hills, literally, for
Fiesole. Just a few miles outside the
city, Fiesole is a quiet retreat for the fortunate, perched on a hill north of
Florence. The location offers panoramic views of the city, though today’s haze
and clouds left much of that to our imaginations.
After climbing a few more hills, we called it a day and
headed home via back roads instead of the Autostrade.
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