Florence. Tuscany. Italy.

Having persuaded CAMarchand to come spend some time in Italy we are now in an apartment in Florence, one of our favorite cities.

This city has been acclaimed for centuries as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Even today with Italy scrappy and backward and chaotic and overrun with tourists (and wonderful), this city is remarkable. The entire center of Florence is a world heritage site. But the beauty of the city is not just the great buildings and churches but the treasure of the art they contain.

Although we are living virtually in the shadow of the Duomo our neighborhood is certainly not posh. But we are close to some nice markets and (as everywhere here) plenty of restaurants and shops. A few photos of nearby places.

There was nothing at the site of Florence before the Romans came to establish the city in the first century AD. For the previous 900 years Tuscany was the country of the Etruscans, famous metalworkers and bean eaters. But the Etruscan cities were all on the tops of hills for defensive reasons. At that time the Romans were a military superpower and could build their towns where ever they pleased .. and set up their standard one-square-mile fortified city here in the valley of the Arno river.

There were hot springs here then. The Romans would bathe daily if they could and loved hot springs, which determined the sites of so many European cities – for example, Siena, Rome, Paris.

About 500 years ago there was a great awakening of thought in the western world which we call the Renaissance, and it mostly happened here. So from between a bit before 1300 until a bit after 1500 this was the richest and most important city in the world. The history of the city is truly incredible but beyond the scope of this simple blog. But it is well documented and plenty of photos of the preserved buildings and the art of Florence can be found with a search. For a nice overview I would direct you here: wikitravel/en/Florence.

We have stayed a few times in hotels around the Piazza della Repubblica, which was the old roman forum. And I would recommend this area as upscale and in the center of the bustle of the city.

We lived here for a summer back maybe twenty years ago while I went to Italian cooking school. From this postcard photo .. we had an apartment just off the square you can see down river from the old bridge.

I would recommend you not stay too close to the train station or over the river, but otherwise anywhere around the old town is good. There are pedestrian-only areas in the old town, but it can be difficult to walk outside of that area because of the very narrow sidewalks, traffic, and the herds of tourists. For exercise there is a great park down the river past the old walls where you can walk for quite long distances away from the congestion of the city.

I love this old painting of the city looking upriver from where the park is today.

For me Italy is mostly about the food and the wine. But any description I might offer would probably turn into a semi religious rant. I will just say that there are restaurants everywhere and that even the simplest of meals can be tear-formingly delicious and even memorable. The markets are filled with ingredients of the highest quality, bursting with flavor, to bring back to the apartment kitchen. Even the little grocery stores are filled with excellent foods and wines.

The Tuscan countryside is picturesque with numerous interesting towns you can easily tour from Florence as a base.

Volterra, capital of the Etruscans, is small but very interesting and has an excellent museum. San Gimignano was a wealthy city on the ancient pilgrimage route to Rome and is famous for the peculiar tower houses and the region’s nice white wines.

Monteriggioni, a very small hilltop fortress dating from 1213, is worth a quick stop.

And Siena is a fascinating little city with a very rich history and I would highly recommend a visit. Unfortunately, a bit gritty having never really recovered from the plague years and a sacking by the Florentines. If you visit with CAMarchand she has a wonderful little book she constructed from days of photographing the city.

I do not pretend to know much about art, but living here it is so much around me I have to comment a bit. First, Florence has the Uffizi, perhaps the best art gallery in the world. Then there are the churches. There are a lot of them and they are filled with art.

A renaissance art comment you might be interested in: One of the most famous churches in the city is Santa Croce. And one of the many paintings there is this depiction of the Last Supper painted by Gaddi in 1350. It is flood damaged but one can easily see the flat medieval faces depicted.

In 1480, just 130 years later, Ghirlandaio painted this depiction of the Last Supper in one of my favorite churches, the Chiesa di Ognissanti. The difference is dramatic. Ghirlandaio used plumblines to lay out the perspective to make the painting look like an extension of the hall.

The painting depicts realistic characters dining in the double style of the medieval times. It also is filled with a very many interesting religious symbols from the middle ages, which I leave you to search if interested.

People who know art say that Michelangelo’s depiction of the Last Supper painted just before 1500, now in Milano, is the greatest. But I still vote for Ghirlandaio because of how remarkably he set his painting to look like an extension of the dining hall of the church.

The Chiesa di Ognissanti, like all of these neighborhood churches, is in use every day. It also contains the grave of Amerigo Vespucci, namesake of our country.

Again, CAMarchand has a book put together from a summer of photographing the churches of Florence.

Except for the art the churches are quite plain inside compared to those in Rome, where rich patrons and royalty competed to fill them with the most ornate marbles imaginable.

These churches were very plain on the outside too (raw bricks) until in the 1800s when ornate marble facades became fashionable.

There are some wonderful museums here. If you are a scientist you will enjoy the Galileo Museum. The Uffizi is amazing, but I confess that I get zoned out when facing the endless paintings.

I highly recommend the Bargello. Filled with just enough of great (primarily) Renaissance art to understand what it was all about, and including some of the finest Renaissance sculptures.