Florence Italy (Pisa, Volterra, Bocelli and Galileo)

 13 June 2024 - Florence Italy (Pisa, Volterra, Bocelli, and Galileo)

We took another day tour out of Florence and visited Pisa and Volterra.  Along the way, we had lunch near where Andrea Bocelli lives (our guide went to school with him). We spent a nice day continuing our wanderings of Florence’s streets and spent a very nice couple of hours being nerds in Galileo’s science museum. There is so much to see and do in Florence, and we have had pretty good weather so far.  It is warming up, next week is supposed to be really hot.  

The leaning tower is conspicuous amongst the other buildings in the Square of Miracles complex.  I felt somewhat unsettled seeing it.  It is so large and it sure looked like it could fall over any minute.

Our guide started our tour of Pisa with a drive along the Arno River, the same one that runs through Florence. Then we visited the old plaza which was the center of trade and government during the medieval times.  Cosimo (pictured) ruled Pisa in the 1400s. As typical for Cosimo, he had his statue placed in the plaza.

The buildings in the plaza had beautiful, if worn, carvings on their walls.

You could barely see the frescoes that once covered some of the buildings.

Santa Maria Della Spina is one of the oldest churches in Pisa.  It is currently under restoration.  Pisa was heavily bombed during WWII, but most of the damaged ancient buildings have been restored.

Our guide lives in Pisa.  She said that the town was preparing for a large festival and decorating their buildings with lights.  There will be a big fireworks show also.

Pisa used to be a seaport, but because it sits on an alluvial plain, silt has filled in the area and cut Pisa off from the ocean by several miles. The alluvial plain is also why the tower is leaning, the soil is very soft and doesn’t hold weight well.

As we walked through the medieval streets of Pisa, we turned a corner and saw this.  Very impressive!

The engineers say that the 11 year long effort they put into stabilizing the tower in the 1990s will allow it to stand for another 200 years. I don’t know, it sure looked like it could fall over.  Our brains are so programmed to expect buildings to be straight.

The buildings are covered in white marble and is in a Romanesque style. This church was started in the 1000s and has been modified/added to over the years.

The bronze door which depicts various bible scenese was designed by Pisano.

Elaborate carved columns and friezes decorate the exterior.

The baptistery is just as elaborately decorated.

The inside of the cathedral is beautifully covered with stripes of black and white marble and has several frescoes.

The coffered wooden ceiling is gilted.

Beautiful detail in each of the coffers in the ceiling.

The pulpit is marble and carved by another Pisano in the 1300s. It is the most famous item inside the cathedral.

Untold numbers of tourists assumed a pose of holding up the tower.  The guide said the funniest one she saw was three guys stacked in a tower, sitting on each other shoulders, with the last posing to push against the tower.

Leaving Pisa, on our way to Volterra, we drove through some beautiful country.  Our guide was born and raised in this area and told us many stories of her growing up years. She knows the Bocelli family well, she went to school with them, including Andrea.

We stopped at a little plaza in the small town our guide grew up in for lunch.  Seems she knew most of the people walking around the plaza that day.

This is the outdoor theater that Andrea Bocelli built, it can host 8,000 attendees..  It is being readied for a concert series this summer celebrating 30 years of his career. He is having guest performers from all over the world. If you watched the movie he released a couple of years ago, around Easter, this was in the last song and scenes.

Volterra has an elevator to get you up onto the city walls! It was a bit scary because it shook and made lots of noise, but it worked.

I don’t think there was a single flat area in the whole of Volterra.  Very medieval.

The town hall had some of the same features as the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, except this one had a clock. We find it interesting that the tower is not symmetrically placed on the building, same as the one in Florence.  They were built about the same time, around 1250 and must have been added onto at some point.

One thing that made Pisa a valuable city was the salt mines.  They are still being mined.

Fabulous views from the city wall.  Very hazy.  The guide said that the winds are coming from Africa and are carrying sand. It was difficult to breathe that day.

Looking down at a Roman amphitheater and thermal baths.  The locals did not know this was here, it had been covered by dirt over the millennium.  The area was used as a soccer field.  One day, a player complained to the groundskeeper that he had tripped over something.  When they investigated, they found the exposed top of a Roman column. The archeologists soon took over the soccer field.  I don’t know where the kids play nowadays.

In its day, the amphitheater was quite large.  It could hold 3,500 people.

I love these clay roofs and townscapes.

Many of the instruments in the Galileo Museum were recognizable as related to instruments we use today.  But these were much larger and very ornate with engraved metal and carved wood.  Many of the museum’s artifacts came from the Medicis, who besides being patrons of the arts and music, also supported scientists.

Amerigo Vespucci, a famous cartographer, who explored the South American coast.  The Americas are named after him.

Galileo.

So many rooms just chock full of instruments!

A copy machine.  As you write a letter, another is being produced.

Everyone should recognize this as they, at one point in their life, probably owned the modern version (with steel balls.)  It is a demonstration of the conservation of energy.  You pull one of the balls on the end back and let it go so it hits the ball next to it, which hits the ball next to it, until the last ball is hit and swings out and then back in to repeat the sequence. This was a quite large parlor toy, probably over five feet tall!

The very ornate astrolabe, dating from the 16th century, is said to have been used by Galileo.

At the center is a 10th century Arabian astrolabe.  It is surrounded by other ancient astrolabes.

An elaborately decorated German astronomical clock.  It belonged to the wife of Ferdinand De’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Built in the late 1500s, this armillary sphere places the earth at the center of the solar system with the surrounding rings depicting the orbits of the, then known, seven planets.  I don’t know where the Sun was placed. This is all based on Ptolemy’s model of the solar system from around 200 AD. Galileo was put on house arrest and not allowed to teach or publish his works because he said the Sun was the center of the solar system, not Earth. At least, he wasn’t killed, like so many others.

This is a calculator from the 1600s! It still functions.

A lens grinder.  In the 16th century, the lenses were full of imperfections and impurities because they lacked the technology to create cleaner glass. Rock crystals were often used.

The only surviving telescopes built by Galileo.  He used these to find the moons of Jupiter. Such simple instruments, yet they changed our view of the heavens.