Florentine Kaleidoscope

We just returned from the most detailed walking tour of Florence that I have ever experienced. We saw so many things and went to so many places that I cannot begin to describe them all. Our guide Mike walked us for over four hours, first to the Duomo, then through the streets to Palazzo Vecchio, over the Arno river and through some recently restored areas of the city. He took us into some churches with some very obscure early works by artist such as Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, and Verrocchio. He took us inside the benevolent order of St. Martin, a charitable organization to which Michelangelo belonged. Some art historians believe that a young Michelangelo painted a good part of the artworks that adorn the walls of this small room. The benevolent order is still in business, and volunteers provide aid to the poor and to orphans even today. We walked through the street where Botticelli was born. We saw the church where he was buried. We stood on the site of the home of Dante Alighieri and saw where he wrote the Divine Comedy. We saw an apartment rented by Leonardo da Vinci. We saw the building in which he began painting the Mona Lisa. We passed by the house of Lisa del Giacondo, his model for the painting. We saw the building where, in 1913, thieves attempted to sell that painting, thus giving it a status and notoriety it had never known. We went within a block of the convent where La Giaconda died as widowed nun. Mike pointed out the building in which the story of Pinocchio was written. I wish I had been able somehow to record his entire presentation because the detail and the breath of his knowledge surpasses that of any guide I have had. What a day! What a city!Read more