We arrived in Florence late at night after doing Pisa so the first night was uneventful. We did discover a laundromat near our hotel though so that was convenient. Me and my laundry issues, haha…
The next day was more interesting. We woke up and went down to…. the Galleria dell’Accademia (Academy Gallery) to check out Michelangelo’s David! Actually they have other sculptures by him there too but I think everyone is there to just look at David. Apparently, in summer the queues can get ridiculously long and they actually let you pre-book your tickets so as to guarantee chance to meet David. In any case, since it was winter, there was no crazy queue and we got to see David just by walking in. Only one lousy picture cos they don’t allow photos apparently.
David was well, just amazing… Again I think it’s one of those things you have to go see for yourself. There are like a gazillion replicas out there but nothing beats seeing the real thing. Of course they now have a glass barricade in place cos apparently some crazy dude decided to throw himself at the statue and hammer away the toes so now you can only admire it at a distance. His face really does look different at different angles so I guess it shows how great an artist Michelangelo was. Apparently he preferred sculptures to paintings, so maybe that’s why David looks the way he does and why its so famous.
There were other sculptures by Michelangelo there too, so we also spent a bit of time looking at them. Those sculptures are ‘the four famous nonfiniti (“unfinished”) Slaves, or Prisoners’. Though they are unfinished, they also looked kind of completed to me.
After that we walked around a bit and stared at the other sculptures and paintings. One floor was closed though so there wasn’t really that much to see and we left to see… the Duomo!
The Duomo, which by the way we realized there’s one in every city in Italy, was apparently ‘the largest cathedral in its day’ and is ‘still the second longest church in Italy (behind St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican)’. Honestly, we thought the colors looked a bit un-church like (?), don’t you think?
Before we talk about the Duomo, let’s talk about the baptistery next to it. A baptistery (for those who are wondering) is well where the baptize takes place, why they have to build a separate building for it, I can’t remember. In any case, this particular baptistery was well known for its glided bronze doors which Michelangelo apparently hailed as ‘Gates of Paradise’. The ones on display were copies and I couldn’t find them at the museum where they were supposed to be. In any case, more on that museum later. The bronze doors were interesting as they depicted scenes of the Old Testament, I can’t really say if they are really ‘Gates of Paradise’ but they were interesting enough to look at.
After that, into the Duomo we went. The inside was relatively empty (?) except for a few frescos in the dome. The dome is really the highlight of the Duomo, it was apparently the largest in the world in its time. There’s some technical explanation on how Filippo Brunelleschi constructed it, but my little brain didn’t really understand but it is a marvel to look at.
After the Dumo, we went to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, which is the museum I mentioned above. I wanted to find those bronze doors but well I couldn’t. They also had an unfinished Pieta by Michelangelo on display so we spent quite a while staring at it. CS actually spent a really long time admiring it so I went off exploring the other bits of the museum.
There was supposed to be some gates of St John the Baptist on display but they were being restored so I didn’t get to see them. The museum was interesting enough, they had a pretty good explanation on the evolution and construction of the Duomo but most of it was in Italian so I didn’t really get it. They also had a restoration room which was closed but looking through the glass door, it looked like a surgical room, hehe MH maybe you’ll like it. Pity the restorers weren’t working, it would have been interesting to see how they actually carry out their work.
After the museum, we decided to climb the Campanile di Giotto, aka bell tower. You could climb up both the bell tower and also the Brunelleschi’s Dome aka the Duomo’s dome but we thought the bell tower would be a better choice since
(a) you can take pictures of the dome from the bell tower,
(b) you need to pay to climb the dome and the bell tower and we didn’t want to pay for both
(c) we honestly cannot climb both, considering our age, haha…
The first thing we saw while getting the tickets was that ‘there is no lift (!)’, lol… The climb was well tiring, there were a few rest stops (I call them rest stops) so you can take pictures and catch your breath before continuing. Our decision to climb the bell tower was definitely the right one cos the dome looked ridiculously crowded even in winter. The sun was out though by the time we got to the top so pictures didn’t exactly looked good.
We had dinner at a little place recommend by our guidebook (Trattoria Le Mossacce, Via del Proconsolo 55r). We had fabulous stews, an interesting soup, good local wine (Chianti region) and beer (Birra Moretti). Finished the beer but wine was just too much. So that's part uno, part due will be up soon.
Can't wait for the post from Milan!
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