The Arts

On Tina's birthday, 1 March 2001, we drove to Miami Airport (took 3.5 hours), for a 2 weeks' vacation in Florence. We had booked it only 2 weeks before, on line, with italiatour.com.

We flew with to Milan and then on a commuter plane to Florence. It was pouring when we arrived and the temperature was low 40's. Luckily we had taken our windbreakers along and they served us well for the first couple of days.

that's how cold it was

Our hotel was beautiful and comfortable. Hotel Villa Carlotta is situated in a quiet area, on the south side of the city, adjacent to the Boboli Gardens of the Pitti palace. Almost all the interesting places are in walking distance, although we did take the bus back to the hotel on occasions.

Below are the highlights of our stay in Florence, as well as trips to Pisa and to Fiesole.

Pitti Palace

Originally built in the 1450's, Luca Pitti wanted a palace to outdo his archrivals, the Medici family. Ironically, a hundred years later Cosimo de Medici bought the palace when the Pitti's heirs had gone belly up because of construction costs. They enlarged the palazzo and from then on it was the official home of Florence's rulers. When the last person of the Medici clan died in 1743, she bequeathed the priceless art collection to Florence, for the pleasure of the people of the whole world.

The Palatine Gallery is the best-known part of this complex, with its huge royally-decorated rooms crammed with Renaissance and Baroque paintings. It is all very confusing because the pictures are left as the Medicis hung them, which was with an eye towards decoration not edification. Another thing, which was annoying, is that everything is printed in Italian: the gallery information and the individual labels. Not an English, German or French label in sight.

All the big artists names are here even though some of the best stuff was carted across the river to the Uffizi.

The building is pretty ugly on the outside, but overwhelming when you get inside, because of all the treasures.

We went there on a Friday. Although there was no entrance fee that day, it was fairly quiet (probably because it rained).

There are so many galleries, everyone filled with beautiful art by all the well known masters, that we had to stop after 3 hours and revisit the palace a few days later so we would enjoy all the works.

It is impossible to relay our experience of the museum on this page. Nevertheless, I need to say something about the Jupiter Room. It is the most splendid of all, designed by Pietro da Cortona. The ceiling fresco shows the moment when Jupiter is about to crown the young prince Ferdinant II de' Medici, who has been brought to him by Hercules. But the most incredible art is around and below the Jupiter fresco by Florentine quadraturist Jacopo Chiavistelli (Quadraturists were artists who painted architectural views in a fully illusionistic style). If you haven't bothered to enlarge the photos so far, you MUST enlarge the photo of the ceiling below here on the right. Everything you see is painted -the columns, the marble, the shadows- on the flat surfaces of the walls and ceiling.

We bought two beautiful books with the complete catalogue of the Pitti palace's Palatine Gallery art.

Bomboli Gardens

When the Medici did something, they did it right. They had the "backyard" of the Pitti palace landscaped to an exquisite example of Italian Renaissance masterpiece gardens, with an amphitheater, fountains, ponds, sculptures, a grotto and a porcelain museum.

The weather was beautiful -sunny, low 60's- and we walked for almost 2 hours. It was great.

Below are just some random snapshots of places opposite the Palace. Look what beautiful things Italians do with street corners (photo below right).

Piazza della Signoria

This is the center of Florentine government, since medieval times. Famous for the Palazzo Vecchio and the Loggia dei Lanzi, a mini open-air museum with sculptures (copies) by Donatello (the lion and Judith & Holofernes) and Michelangelo's David (also a copy, the original is in the Accademia), see below.

Here is where the major challenger -moralistic monk Savonarola-  to Medici control was burned at the stake in 1498. After 4 years of puritanism the Florentines executed him and welcomed the Medici back.

The Uffizi

Originally built for Cosimo de Medici to have all his government offices close to his home, in 1559 his son converted the top floor into a museum to show off the Medici collection. Today the Uffizi is home to the giants like Michelangelo, Titian, Giotto, Boticelli etc. etc. It is one of the world's greatest museums. There are 42 rooms arranged chronologically along the corridor (see photo left below).

It took us two days to tour and digest all the hundreds and hundreds of paintings in the Uffizi.

Although people were lining up for hundreds of yards, we had booked tickets for a specific time and could walk in, without any delay. That's the only way to do it.

How do you select your favorite paintings from such a feast? You can't. But, surprisingly, both for Tina and myself the paintings by Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Botticini were our favorites.

To give you a taste of the diversity of the styles in the Museum, I've added photos of three totally different styles. First our favorite Boticelli,  then Pierro di Cosimo with a very whimsical painting and finally a Rubens painting.  I've added the last photo, not only because I like Rubens, but because it is such a "over the top" painting of a bacchanale, with everybody getting drunk and a pissing child. Vulgar and delicious. It is a typical Jan Steen theme, done by "The King of Baroque".

Science Museum

This is a nice place to visit and cure the "art overload" feeling.

Here you'll find the Medici collection of scientific instruments. It is a beautiful collection of gnomons, compasses, globes and telescopes. The museum focuses on Italian favorite Galileo (yes, the earth does orbit around the sun) with all his telecopes, including the one from which he discovered the satellites of Jupiter. In 1633 he was tried for heresy for his scientific theories and condemned to life in prison, although that sentence was commuted by the Pope.