The Medusa is dead

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Dear Max and Dominic,

There's a part of northern Italy that has captured the imaginations of many people that have visited this country: Tuscany. It's a region of rolling hills going down to the sea, with beautiful villages, towns on hill-tops and green farms with lines of tall, thin cyprus trees marching up the ridges like soldiers that haven't quite realised that the Roman empire has actually ended.

The most extraordinary thing happened in this part of the world between the 14th and the 16th centuries - suddenly a surprising number of clever people started making buildings, sculptures, paintings, books and laws that were different from anything that had gone before and often amazingly beautiful. It was like a supernova of human creativity. And it was all centred on a small part of northern Italy.

We paid a visit to two cities in the heart of it a couple of weeks ago: Florence and Siena. The photos show you some of the things that were being made by those amazing people.

Look at the buildings: the church looks like a giant celebratory cake made out of stone, the courtyard looks so peaceful that nothing could disturb you there, and the town hall looks like the people inside were strong enough to last forever (they weren't but they made some amazing things while they lasted).

Look at the sculpture: the gargoyle looks like he's a bit worried about all the new fangled ways people are thinking but Perseus looks very confident with the Medusa's head as if, since he was able to kill her, he can handle anything. I think that's how the people that made sculptures like this felt.

And look at the paintings: the evil snake is trying to eat up the people in a corner of one of the churches but the roof is all starry skies to remind us that beauty will win in the end.

They call this explosion of art and hopefulness "the renaissance" which means 'the re-birth' and that's what it was in a way. But I just like looking at the things those people made, so long ago.

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