Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

Today was a very big day that started off with a free walking tour of Florence. I had avoided the main town centre because I wanted my first experience to be with a tour and I'm glad I did. By the end of the tour, there were only more things to add to my list of things to do. The person organising the tour was very well versed in the history of the city, and as such, he provided great insight for the tour. He began with a brief description of the city as a whole and highlighted the need to spend some time in the south of Florence. This reinforced my decision to spend my first day down there, and it sounds like I did everything worth doing, so that was positive. After this, we began our tour and we started by going through the religious centre of Florence so I got to experience the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Brunelleschi's dome, The Gates of Paradise and Giotto's Bell Tower. This was incredible. The size and grandure of these momentumens are indescribable, to think how old they are and how enourmas they are is difficult to comprehend. I had seen them from afar but never expected what I witnessed. The most perplexing part of the buildings are arriving through the small and narrow streets and seeing your vision blocked from these enourmas structures that appear in the distance. This is not something I expected and can not begin to describe. The tour guide did a good job of explaining the history and the building processes to create it. A hectagon is important imagery in Catholicism, and so they wanted to create a dome that matched that symbolism. Yet they did not yet have the capacity to develop a dome in this way. As such, they could not build it. The rest of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral was built in preparation for the day they would figure it out. Eventually, Brunelleschi figured a way to make it work (by constructing a regular spherical dome on the inside and encapsulating it with a hexagonal dome) and so they could complete the monument. They thus named the dome after him. I have booked tickets to walk the steps between the two domes (which include over 400 steps in very confined spaces) because the view from the top would have to be the best Florence. We then left the religious parts of Florence behind us and made our way to the Piazza Della Repubblica, which represents the economic centre of the city and the tour guy explained the history behind the city centre after it became the capital of Italy (briefly). Back in the day, It was dirty, and so they rebuilt it to be much cleaner and more organised. He used the time to explain the differences between the Italian cultures from Tuscinians, Napolians, Sicilians, and so on. This was interesting to me as I was unaware of the differences between the regions. He showed the previous boundaries of the city and how it has expanded over the years. This was cool as you could see the city grow before your eyes. We passed the Ponte Vecchio bridge as part of the tour. I visited this yesterday, but it was good to do in a tour as the guide explained the history behind it. During the plague they made the connection that where there was a high prominence of bugs and rats, there was more deaths due to the plague, as such they decided that they would place butchers and the like along the bridge so they could dump all the waste into the river, therefore reducing the number of rats and bugs that were present in the city. Finally we made our way to the cultural centre of the city at the Piazza della Signoria. This includes the Ufizzi Gallery, the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Loggia dei Lanzi. This was an incredible experience as you got a glimpse of the history that the city has to offer. He explained how the Medicis (former bankers and politicians famous for being incredibly rich) eventually inbred themselves into extinction. But before the family died away, the final heir of the family left all their belongings to the city of Florence under the clause that it would never be sold, would never leave Florence and would stay in the possession of the city. This is part of the reason the city maintains such a large plethora of historical artefacts. As one of the richest families of all time, they had owned, now priceless artworks. Because of this decision, Florence is renowned as a cultural hub of Italy, Europe, and the world. We finished overlooking the replica statue of David and the guide once again did a good job of explaining the history of the monument. There were two anatomical inaccuracies with the moment. Michaelangelo was an artist and a man of science and so studied anatomy. He had no muscles that didn't exist in the human body, and everything was anatomically accurate. He used the statues nearby to represent how other artists make the men impossible strong, with muscles that do not exist in the body. Everything was accurate, but the fact that the hands and feet were considerably bigger than is possible on a human male. He did this because he was considerate of perspective. He expected the statue to be placed atop the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. As such, I wanted to ensure these features could be visible from 50m below. The second inaccuracies relates relates the cock. David - according to the story in the bible would have been circumcised, but to be accurate to the model he used to signify David, he left the monument uncircumcised. The accuracy of the art makes it that much more important and makes me want to see the real statue while I'm in Florence.

That was just my morning with the tour. Afterwards, I restarted my general tendency of walking around random streets. As this was pretty much my first time in the northern part of the city, there was still plenty to see. Just about every road has some hidden monument you never expect to come across in the narrow streets. First, I stumbled into the markets, but they mostly sold Italian leather and so I wasn't quite in the market for anything. I moved on a couple of streets down and came across the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, and it was magnificent. As I am doing this retrospective of a couple of days, it was as impressive as some of the museums and gallery's I have been to. It was 7 euro and so I wasn't sure about it but it was well worth the money. Huge altars, stained glass, painted walls and ceilings, artwork, amazing architecture, and statues lined about every surface of the church. Having just stumbled across this Basilica wandering the streets of Florence, knowing this is one of thousands really puts into perspective of the wealth that the Catholic Church has. Even outside the Basilica, it had an outdoor area with tombs and artworks, followed by a small museum with collections of artefacts and clothing from different periods and pope's.

This brought us to the afternoon, and I was already knackered. Because of this and a dinner i had planned, I thought I'd send myself home. I began walking along a riverside park on my way home, but it was not much of a park from what I had seen. It was a long asphalt path with trees on one side and the river on the other. I got to a point where another path developed that resembled something closer to a park. But as I entered, I had a man yelling from across the park that he wanted to chat, I tried to keep walking, but he eventually caught up to me. He was nice enough and was mostly just trying to sell me drugs, but I said no and just tried to get out of there as soon as possible. That was the end of it, and I restarted my walk. I eventually got bored of the walk however, and having noticed the same guy was now following behind me (which I'm sure is just a coinscidence), it signified a solid reason to cut my walk short and went home.

I then caught up with a local as an opportunity to learn about Italian night-life (as I haven't been able to go out really), and see the city at night. Italy is a very interesting place - we walked between a few bars and got something to eat. But the amount of drinking in the streets was hard to believe. All the buildings are too small to hold more than a few people and so everyone just drinks in the streets. It was kind of dirty but very interesting. Then on the walk home, it was cool to see the town at night, less busy and lit up with all the lights, there were still plenty of people about for 2am but nothing compared to during the day. I found it very interesting to know the lady I was with lived maybe 20m from the Ufizzi Gallery. All these narrow and tall buildings I found it hard to believe that people lived in them, but of course they do. I couldn't wrap my head around living across the road from one of the most significant art galleries in the world. In Australia, the closest you get to that is a pub across the road. It was also the location of a Mafia bombing attack targeted at the Gallery and which badly impacted her own building and killed 3 innocent people. Even these little streets and houses are so filled with history that it is mind-boggling.Meer informatie