Firenze - June 2nd, 2010

Today was Florence "culture day". Elly and I hit up a few world-renowned sites of artistic and/or architectural merit. We visited Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Galleria dell'Accademia, Ponte Vecchio, and Palazzo Vecchio. For the uncultured (that's all of you, heheh), it means we visited some museums, some churches, and a bridge.

The basilica and the cattedrale were impressively large, stone churches, equipped with expansive, beautiful piazzas. The cattedrale was especially impressive. It was made from several different colors of polished stone, and adorned with relief carvings and gold illuminated paintings. One huge door of the cattedrale was made entirely of golden relief carvings, depicting various biblical scenes. I'm fairly certain it was real gold, too. The church was extremely impressive, to the point of being overwhelming.

On our way to the Galleria d.A museum rain started coming down pretty hard. Umbrella salesmen came out in droves, and soon the streets were filled with brightly colored blobs. We spent an hour waiting in line in the rain, huddled under a single small, blue umbrella that I'd brought with me from Colorado. We snapped some pictures and chatted, and the rain wasn't very cold so it wasn't too bad.

The museum featured renaissance and pre-renaissance paintings and statues, most notably Michelangelo's David. Most of the art was pretty skippable (especially pre-ren paintings, ugh.), but I was quite impressed by the statues. One large room featured full statues and shoulder-to-shoulder busts, all lifelike. I think most if not all of them were plaster casts, not the originals, but still quite impressive. Especially in such large quantity.

The David was definitely the prime attraction. It has a very commanding presence, to the point of seeming to be a living person in the room. This is due in no small part to the amazing detail on the statue,  down to tendons and veins visible on his hands. The statue is just under 500 years old and has been hanging out in that same room for nearly 140 years, standing 17 feet tall. It kind of makes you feel insignificant looking at it.

We passed through the cattedrale piazza again and then headed out to the Ponte Vecchio bridge. The Ponte Vecchio appears to be a normal street, lined with shops, but is actually a bridge over the Arno River. We snapped some good pictures of the river from the lookout on the center of the bridge and then walked down and took some pictures of the P.V. from another bridge upriver. Apparently when the P.V. was first built back in the Roman Empire, most bridges were lined with shops. Seems like a lot of work.

We then viewed some more impressive statues outside the Palazzo Vecchio and Galleria degli Uffizi. Elly's favorite statue (which was also viewable as a cast at the Galleria d.A.) was "Rape of the Sabines". The statue is really interesting, in that it was carved to be viewed from every angle, offering a different piece of the story as you spiral around it. It is also a single statue that features three full figures, which is apparently pretty rare.

My favorite was Perseus and The Medusa. It is a pretty bad-ass statue featuring greek champion Perseus decapitating Medusa. It looks like the action shot from a movie poster, and is actually pretty gory, as the decapitation isn't very clean, and there are are these gross dangly bits. Heh.

We had intended to hit up the Galleria degli Uffizi, but by the time we got around to it they had closed for the day. I guess it would have been sort of a bummer if we could actually suck out all of the culture Florence had to offer in a single day. I guess that'll just have to be our excuse to come back soon.

After a long day of culture, we stumbled upon this very cool, quirky restaurant. The place was painted up in black, dark reds and greens, and featured unique, weird lamps at each table. The food was really good, as usual in Italy, but the unique atmosphere was the best part. We were pretty hungry and exhausted by this time so we didn't get more than a couple of pictures.

Still pretty exhausted now, actually. Culture makes me tired, whew. I think its time to rot my brain with a couple of episodes of American television and then get some sleep. Tomorrow we have to check out early and catch a train to Rome for the last two days of our trip.

Photos