Final Day with the Medici

It feels like we have been here a long time. The door of our loft apartment in the Palazzo Buondelmonti, the former residence of Florentine patrician family, the Buondelmontis, who bought the place in 1517, opens onto a small entrance from two flights of stairs that lead up from the third floor. The tiny lift (ascensore) walled by mirrors that says it can hold three people (it can’t, it can hold two people if one stands sideways), the cool interior of the ground floor entrance that leads to the front door onto Piazza Santa Trinita. It’s felt like home for a little while.

We’ve entered and exited this old palazzo multiple times a day for seven days. We’ve gotten to know our streets, our bridges, our restaurants and bars, our neighbourhood, even some lovely people who have served us more than once. Despite Italy’s heat, it has been a delight to live here for a week. Tomorrow, our eighth day, we leave for Ravenna. I will miss this. I will miss Firenze, and I do wonder when in reflective moods whether I will ever see this extraordinary city again.

To mark our departure, we decided today to visit Firenze’s most famous citizens, or at least their tombs, the guys who are everywhere in this city, either in name or in legacy, the Medici. It was actually our Duomo tour guide Laura who reminded us that Cosimo de Medici and his two grandsons Lorenzo il Magnifico and Guiliano (murdered by the rival Pazzi) are not buried in splendour in any of Firenze’s basilicas, but in the Medici tomb, essentially their family mausoleum. Google Maps informed us that the tomb was a nine-minute walk from home. We stopped off at Palazzo Strozzi for a coffee and cornetto on the way, as you do when you are adventuring in mausoleums.

For the fame of the grand family, I was surprised to see the line for tickets was surprisingly short. We were inside and putting our bags through security in about five minutes and buying our tickets in six. There was not a crowd by any means, but we didn’t have the place to ourselves. We discovered that the whole thing was divided into different sections.

Down under everything and from a significant stairway, we found the tomb of Cosimo de Medici (known as Cosimo the Elder), sitting in the crypt designed by Brunelleschi and known in these parts as The Old Sacristy. As I understand it, he is actually entombed as part of the central pillar of The Old Sacristy. There is a short inscription in Latin that does not actually mention his name: “Petrus Medices patri faciundum curauit”. This translates to “Piero de Medici had this done for his father”. As much as I liked the late Julian Sands playing the gouty sickly but harmless Piero in the Netflix series The Medici, I think real Piero might have mentioned his dad’s name on his tomb rather than his own. It’s just a thought.

Above, in another room, we found the boys, Lorenzo and Guiliano. Their tomb is a simple affair, well as simple an affair as you can have when your resting place is designed by Michelangelo. They are buried together now, having previously been separated in the Church of San Lorenzo, in what is known as The New Sacristy. The tomb has a statue on top of the Virgin and Child in the middle, flanked on either side by Saints Cosmas and Damian, the patrons of the Medici family. I make a serious point here. Given their incredible power, influence, patronage to the arts, the church, the Duomo and dome etc, their quiet tomb has little bling and virtually no pomp at all. You contrast this with the Medici Grand Dukes that followed them and wow, what a contrast.

The third and final place we visited was the Chapel of the Princes. You walk through a bare corridor and out into a cavernous octagonal chamber of marble, precious stones, high vaulted painted ceilings, columns, giant statues and massive sarcophagi. Makes me wonder whether Napoleon had this in mind when he organised his tomb in Paris much later on. Incidentally, we saw his bathroom yesterday at the Palazzo Pitti.

Florence became a Grand Duchy in 1569 when then Cosimo I (different from Cosimo the Elder) became grand Duke of Tuscany. The octagonal chamber is honestly, a wonder to behold. My jaw dropped when I walked into it as I had not anticipated going into something so large and so grand. It houses the tombs of some of the Grand Dukes, and again, honestly, has to be seen to be believed. Chris and I walked around it this way and that speechless for quite a while, just gazing at it, trying to process the sight. I guess, just what the Medici Grand Dukes had in mind.

In the bookshop, I bought a book of short stories in English called Stories from Florence. It looks fun. I also bought a Firenze T shirt this afternoon too. We have rested and napped this afternoon and we’re off to dinner tonight at Colle Bereto Lounge Bar which is a lovely cool place we found not far from us.

We splurged on our last meal here, completely fabulous, and went for a quick walk over the Ponte Santa Trinita and caught the sunset over the Arno, a glorious show that was a fitting goodbye to this wondrous city.Read more