Santa Maria, Mercato, Bargello

Our first stop of the day was at the Santa Maria Novella church. Brad wanted us to not just see the Renaissance style church, but also a few of the art pieces inside. The outside is really beautiful as it uses different coloured stones and marbles to create a decorative effect. It is very different than most of the churches we have seen.

Inside was lovely as well. There were very large stained glass windows and a variety of paintings, sculptures, and frescoes. The most important piece was by Massacio who basically figured out how to create perspective in his paintings. You could see other works where the artist has just painted everyone the same size, which gives no sense of distance. Massacio figured out how to make things appear more "3D" and not so 2D.

After the church, we walked back to Mercato Centrale so we could have lunch in the upstairs area. The food options were mind boggling! There was antipasti, tripe sandwiches, supplis, vegan sandwiches, sushi, pizza, and pasta. We tried some pork soup dumplings; a veggie and shrimp crepe roll; a small salad of mozzarella, tomatoes, eggplant and greens; and Evan wanted to try fried rabbit, so we had that too! Fried rabbit is fantastic!

Quite full, we set off for Florence's national museum, the Bargello. The first floor was mostly sculptures done in a variety of mediums including bronze, porcelain, and marble. We got to see Donatello's version of David, which is much smaller and more boyish than the Michelangelo version. We also got to see works by Giberti and Brunschelli. The second floor was full of artefacts like keys, jewelry, medals, coins, armour and weapons. Evan really like the weaponry and picked out what items he'd use in a zombie apocalypse!

It was late into the afternoon by this point and the line to get into the Boboli Gardens was massive, so we decided to make our way home and cool down before dinner.Read more