Day 22: All Day in Florence

Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Florence
July 12th 2011

Published: July 19th 2011

Edit Blog Post

scallea

Bridges as seen from Uffizi

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Undiscovered Sights
The guide book that says you have the city to yourself at night is wrong. People are out until midnight in Italy, and while it’s a festive atmosphere, you are not alone. At 7:30am, however, you really do have the streets and the sites to yourself. There was no crowd blocking my view of the baptistery’s bronze doors, or anyone gathered in the cove of statues by the Uffizi. I loved it.

Uffizi Gallery
My reservation was for 8:15am, right when the Uffizi opened. There was a choice of lines, however, and getting in the wrong one would cost me. When in doubt, ask until someone gives you a firm answer that seems to make sense. The “I already have reservations” line was across the corridor from the main entrance. I sat next to a couple from New Hampshire and waited for the doors to open. Once I exchanged my voucher for a real ticket, I was ushered into another line, back toward the main entrance. It took about 15 minutes to get through all the lines and security, and I finally got into the museum at 8:30.

The Uffizi is big.

Sidewalk art

Not Louvre big, but big. Without an audio guide or tour, I would have been completely lost on where to go and what to look at; the collection was overwhelming in size. The free Rick Steves audio tour was pretty good for the money. There were some paintings described which had been moved, or rooms which were closed, but the narration was pretty accurate and took me to most of the same pieces the tour groups looked at. It took me one and a half hours to go through the main museum, and another half hour of navigating through the special exhibit and finding my way to and from the toilet. P.S. If I had known better, I would have held it and gone at another facility. When I opened the stall, I was faced with essentially a bidet without a faucet. Squatting over a bowl is not my idea of a good time.

Galileo Museum
Just out of the exit from the Uffizi is the Galileo Museum. I felt it was important to break up visits to art galleries and churches with non-art exhibits, or else it’s just another 500-year-old painting, but whoop. The museum hosted a large

Duomo

collection of scientific instruments used during the era of Galileo and through the 19th century. An audio guide was available, but each item was labeled in Italian and English and each room had one or two narratives about the collection. There were also several videos, with Italian and English subtitles, which explained how some of the devices worked. I saw everything from astronomy to chemistry to anatomy. Thanks to my Astronomy 100 course at community college, I knew actually knew who Ptolemy was; he was briefly mentioned in the astronomy rooms.

The medical collection was interesting, a little gruesome, and surprisingly modern in some respects. There was a large assortment of wax models from the 1700’s, showing cross sections of the lower female torso during childbirth. They looked exactly like the models used today, detailed down to the layers of skin and fat to the umbilical cord. Meant as a teaching tool, the variety of models showed different birth circumstances, and were probably accompanied by a lengthy lecture from a professor.

The highlights of the museum for me were the multi-layered astronomical globe and Galileo’s middle finger. I liked that he was eternally telling everyone to fuck off.

Baptistery bronze doors

Lunch
Desperate to escape the heat (I heard it was 100F degrees today), I entered a nearby restaurant. The staff must have been run by someone in the American food service, because they were trying to get people in and out of tables as quickly as possible. I ordered a forgettable bruschetta and salad. At least it gave me a rest for my feet.

Bargello Gallery
Within the same neighborhood is the Bargello, a noted sculpture gallery. Like the Uffizi, I had to walk through a metal detector and run my bag through a screening machine. I don’t know why; they let people walk through even if the machine beeped. Inside, I stepped into a courtyard full of marble statues. The special exhibit was a fountain piece which had recently been stitched together. It was very impressive, if not provocative. When it was working, water would actually pour from Venus’ nipples.

The museum also housed a room dedicated to china and dishware from several eras, religious artifacts that look the same in every other church, and a room of carved ivory. Before, the only carved ivory I had seen was my mother’s small collection or ornately patterned

Sidewalk art

figurines from Asia. The ivory art at the Bargello was almost completely themed around various scenes from the bible. While some of the pieces were still beautifully decorated, I think I prefer the Asian ivory art.

Church of Santa Croce
A very short distance from the Bargello was Santa Croce. The piazza was nearly empty, being flooded with sunlight, but the shadowed areas were crowded with people. I made my way through the Japanese tour group huddled in a small spot of shade on the church steps and purchased my ticket to get in. I am finding that in the larger cities, churches require admission, even if they are still an operating church. And I always bring a scarf or shall with me. Some places offer the tissue robes to cover shoulders or too much thigh, but there are many which do not. You can always tell when no tissue robes are available because there is a crowd of fleshy tourists gathered just to the side of the entrance, as if staring at the doors will eventually lead to admission.

Inside Santa Croce, I found a seat on one of the pews and lightly dozed. It is always

Santa Croce

altar piece

a welcome relief when a church has seating available; some do not. My feet were sore from walking through all the museums and the heat made me sleepy. So I put on my sunglasses and dozed. After my period of rest I got up and explored the church. It housed the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo. Michelangelo’s tomb was surprisingly simple compared to the artists’ tombs in the Frari church in Venice. I also found Dante’s tomb. The man is never portrayed as smiling. He was probably that awkward guy that no one wanted to party with. There were many other tombs within the church also. My favorites were the ones with marble maidens crying over the deceased. How nice to have someone weep for you for all eternity.

Admission to the church also included the courtyard, an underground cemetery, another chapel, and the museum. Actually, I don’t know if the museum cost extra, but no one was at the desk when I walked in, so I kept going. The chapel was simple, featuring portraits of the four evangelists and 12 apostles. The interesting part was that the domed ceiling was painted with astrological symbols, which seemed a little

Santa Croce

Dante's tomb. He never smiles!

pagan. The underground cemetery was very cool. The tombs on the walls were nothing fancy, but what I liked was that the floor was paved with flat tomb stones. Mostly written in Latin (I assumed), the stones were pretty worn from centuries’ of foot traffic.

The museum didn’t have anything extraordinary, and especially after going through the first couple rooms in the Uffizi, I was over looking at golden portraits of Madonna and Child from the 13th and 14th centuries. Two pieces stood out to me, though. One was a portrait of Mary presenting child Christ to someone. In the center of the painting was a pit of fire and Joseph was offering doves as a sacrifice, again, very pagan. The second piece was of Judgment Day, but this piece was different. Instead of placing heaven at the top and hell at the bottom, the artist had the monsters of hell pour down onto the people from above. A very naked Christ stood in the very center of the painting, pulling the faithful to the safety of heaven. To assist him, bare- and perky-breasted maidens pulled people from the crowd too. One man in the painting appeared to display

Santa Croce

eternal mourning

less than holy thoughts about these women.

Pitti Palace
I forced myself through the heat and across the rover to the Pitti Palace. It looked more like a menacing fortress, completely made of brick and undecorated. Because I had seen Florence’s ultimate painting gallery this morning, I decided to skip the Pitti Palace’s main gallery and go to the costume museum instead. The tickets were not sold individually as advertised online, and I had to buy a combo ticket to get in, even though I didn’t intend to see any of the other sites.

The costume gallery was different than I expected, but I still liked it. Instead of displaying historic dresses individually, a set of dresses were displayed together from different centuries or decades. There were more dresses from the 20th century than any other time period, which I found somewhat disappointing, as I wanted to see more dresses from the 1700’s and 1800’s. But it was interesting to see how dresses from the 1900’s, 1930’s, and 1970’s looked nearly identical, demonstrating how fashion is cyclical. So just save your clothes for 50 years and they’ll be back in style again.

Quasi Nap
Four museums and

Santa Croce

Eternal mourning

a church in one day was exhausting. Yeah, a museum is not difficult on it’s own, but going to several amounts to a lot of walking and standing. I sat against a column just inside the gate to the Pitti Palace and just rested and hydrated. I probably nodded off a couple times, too, but most of the time I just watched the visitors come and go, and the ticket man abandon his post whenever a pretty lady would walk by.

Shopping Therapy
During my trek back to the hostel, I stepped into a clothing store. There is something energizing about shopping; maybe it is because I am so distracted by trying to convert prices and find something that I like, that I forget about my sore feet. I found a red dress that was practically the shade of the Florentine rooftops, purchased it, and walked back to the hostel on a cloud.

Laundry and Pizza
It is far cheaper to do laundry at the hostels than seek out a launderette in the city. I picked up a margarita pizza (just sauce and cheese) from a café around the corner and washed my clothes. It was a simple