Florence Italy (Uffizi Gallery)

 4 June 2024 - Florence, Italy (Uffizi Gallery)

We took a high speed train from Rome to Florence - Russ clocked the speed at more than 150 mph at one point.  Unlike any train we have taken in the USA (and we have taken many), this train was clean, quiet and smooth.  Very relaxing trip. Our hotel is on the Arno River and is next door to the Uffizi Gallery, one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Florence.

We spent the first few days just wandering around this beautiful medieval/Renaissance town and taking in the sights.  So many little streets and alleys to explore, I felt that I had been teleported back to the 1500s. And there are sections (similar to Via Corso in Rome) with high end stores like Prada, Tiffany, and Footlocker. Buildings are generally medieval or Renaissance in their appearance, not much Baroque stuff around here.  And even though Florence was a Roman town dating from around 50 BC, only a few artifacts are left under the existing medieval buildings and you don’t get a sense of their presence in today’s city. The Medici family held power here for centuries, and in some ways (even though they are all gone,) is still having a huge influence on the nature and finances of the city. For example, the last Medici who died in the 1800s gave all the Medici art treasures and palaces to the city with the provision that none of it could be sold and it had to stay in Florence.  So tourists flock here to see all the artwork, bringing in lots of income to the city. Tons of cafes with outdoor dining and terrific food. And, lots of tourists.  We tried to do our sightseeing early before the hordes arrived but the afternoons are jammed. And this is just starting into the tourist season, I am told.

A view across the Arno river with the Duomo dome in the background.  The bridge is post WW II.  When the Nazis left Florence for the last time, they bombed all but one of the bridges in order to slow the Allies from entering the city. The bridge they saved is Ponte Vecchio.

Surrounded by our luggage, we enjoyed our train ride very much.

Looking toward the Corridoio Vasariano and Uffizi Gallery.  The top level of the loggia is a corridor built to allow the Medicis to travel from the town hall to their palace, across the river.  It also offered an escape route, in case one was needed. If you watched the movie, Inferno, with Tom Hanks, this corridor and Palazo Vecchio played key roles.

Uffizi Gallery in the front with the Palazzo Vecchio tower in the back and the Duomo dome on the back right.  Florence is a pretty compact city and it is relatively easy to walk from one attraction to the other. Uffizi Gallery is a former administrative building built in the 1500s by the Medici icon, Cosimo. He wanted to have administrative work done next to the Town Hall (Palazzo Vecchio.)

Ponte Vecchio was the one bridge not destroyed by the Nazis.  A bridge has stood at this site since the Roman times.  The current bridge has stood since the 1300s. During Cosimo’s time, the stores housed butchers, farmers and tanners, where the location was convenient for them to throw away their waste in the river.  When the Medicis moved into Pitti Palace and built the corridor which crossed over the bridge, they decided to get rid of the smelly trades and only allow goldsmiths to sell their goods.  This is the case to this day. I spent a fair amount of time pressing my nose to the windows and admiring all the Italian 18K gold jewelry. 

This is just a hundred feet or so from our hotel on a street next to the Uffizi Gallery.  In 1993, the Mafia set off a car bomb at this location and killed five people, injuring 48, while also doing some significant damage to the Uffizi Gallery and surrounding buildings. It was intended to serve as a warning to Mafia members not to turn state evidence for an upcoming trial of a Mafia boss. An olive tree stood at the site at the time of the bombing, this monument talks to the peace and resilience of the Italian people. All of the people involved in the bombing were eventually caught and sentenced to life in prison.

Another monument is a knife coming out of a Uffizzi Gallery wall. The man had five people appended to him, commemorating the five people who died.

The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence.  In the medieval times, Florence was a republic and was run by representatives from the city, selected by lottery to serve for 2 months.  For those two months, they were locked up in the Palazzo and not allowed to do anything other than city business.  Of course, these weren’t the average citizens, they were merchants and wealthy members.

Cosimo, himself.  His sponsorship of art and science helped set the stage for the birth of the Renaissance in Florence. I think he had a pretty strong ego - his name is all over Florence.

Dante Alighieri and his family lived in this building. He did not write Divine Comedy here and he died elsewhere from malaria, but he is still considered an icon of Florence.  Inferno was noteworthy not just because of his description of hell and purgatory which set the model for Renaissance and later religious beliefs, but because the book was the first one written in Italian, not Latin, therefore it was more accessible to people.

The Alighieri crest is still present on the building.

Some of the Renaissance buildings retain their ornate marble exteriors.

This is a Braille map of one side of the Arno river, the side that has the Pitti Palace (the big box in the center) and the Boboli Gardens.  A companion map is on the opposite side of the Arno river.

One of the bigger plazas in Florence is the Repubblica Plaza.  Part of it used to be the Jewish ghetto, which was eliminated when Florence was, for a short time, the capital of a reunited Italy in the 1800s.

I think this is where Disneyland’s Dixie Bands go to retire.

The Duomo (with the dome) is the Catholic church’s fourth largest church.  The building in front is the baptistery. A bell tower completes the complex.

The facade is covered with beautiful Carrara marble and bands of dark green and pink marble.

While the front of the Duomo is beautifully bright and clean, if you walk around the back, you can see ongoing work to clean the marble.

The baptistery has four bronze doors that are world famous.  The real ones are in the museum dedicated to the Duomo complex, as are the statues and paintings that once graced the face of the Duomo and the interior. The baptistery is known for its mosaics.

Many of the statues and monuments in the open are actually replicas with the originals inside various museums.  This is the workshop that makes the replicas.

Enjoyed several Tuscan dishes, including delicious steak.

Russ had a slice of “Grandpa’s pie.”

You can find many of these sandwich shops in the streets.  With a variety of ingredients, including cheese, ham, turkey and tomato, you can ask for the sandwich to be “pannined”. The crispy focaccia is some of the best bread I have ever had.

Porcellino is a bronze fountain of a boar.  If you rub its snout, you are assured of a return to Florence. Russ took no chances and rubbed both the inside and outside.

Florence claims to be the inventor of gelato.  I don’t know if that is true, but every sample we have tasted (and there have been several), is delicious.

We had a wonderful guided tour of the 2nd floor of the Uffizi Gallery. As we walked the rooms, she told the story of the rise of Renaissance art and its significance.  We started with some gothic altar works, painted around 1300, to compare and contrast to the new Renaissance perspectives.

One of the more famous portraits of Italian Renaissance, we were told to note the use of perspective to give dimension to the painting. The landscape is a depiction of the lands that the couple ruled.

I studied this painting in college.  Botticelli’s The birth of Venus. Renaissance art often depicted subjects from classical mythology, not always religious subjects.

Yet another Botticelli painting, the Adoration of the Magi.

One of the other most famous Botticelli’s, Primavera. 

Da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, The Baptism of Christ. Da Vinci was a very young pupil of Verrocchio. 

The angel to the left in the Baptism of Jesus is credited to a young Leonardo Da Vinci.

Da Vinci’s Annunciation.  It has been criticized for some errors in the composition, our guide pointed out that the elongated arms don’t look out of place when viewed from an angle on the right looking up and left.  It is thought that Da Vinci knew where the painting would be placed and painted it from that perspective.  There are only between 17 and 25 existing Da Vinci paintings, so it is amazing to see some of them here.

This room is said to be the beginning of art museums in Florence.  The Medicis used this room to showcase their art collection and invited people to come visit and view them.  The room is beautiful with velvet wallpaper, mosaic floors and fresco ceilings, not to mention the many paintings and sculptures.

Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo.  These figures were extremely similar to the ones Michaelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel. Strong, almost masculine women. Colors of blue, red, and gold.

And…not a Michelangelo or Botticelli or a Raphael.