Thursday 15 June 2023
Third day in Florence and maybe we’re starting to get into it – we even finally relaxed enough to stop at a completely random cafe-bar for negronis before dinner, instead of needing to research “the best bars for a negroni in Florence” first.
So once you get past the initial wow of being in the heart of the Renaissance, I do think Florence can be a hard city to love. There is no greenery anywhere. Okay, a couple of renowned gardens you can pay to visit, but otherwise no tree-lined avenues, no flowerbeds in the piazzas, no verdant corners. You can see this clearly if you look down from the top of the Duomo. All the streets are cobbled, look much alike, and have narrow pavements. It’s a mercy that the centre doesn’t allow much car traffic but it’s bad enough dealing with the pedestrian traffic at the various chokepoints like the Ponte Vecchio.
Essentially, Florence is one of the very rare cities where the indoor attractions are almost the whole reason to be there. Today we explored a medieval Palazzo Davanzetti, climbed up Brunelleschi’s dome and gazed at Donatello’s naughty David in the Bargello.
Davanzetti was so quiet, only a couple of other visitors, but it’s a beautifully preserved fortified house in the middle of the city (Florentine nobles did not trust their neighbours!) with the most amazing painted rooms dating back all the way to pre-Renaissance times. The best was a room whose upper walls were decorated with the baffling and touching scenes from a tragic medieval love story.
The Duomo, by contrast, was thronged with people and we climbed the 463 steps inside the narrow stone passages and between the skins of Brunelleschi’s dome with plenty of company. The view from the top was worth it. The whole of Florence is a sea of warm ochre and terracotta.
Donatello’s beautiful polished bronze David might be the very best thing today. And we only saw it because we had the “Firenze Card” that gets you into any museum (except the Duomo) for free and without queuing. This makes it very easy to say “well, we weren’t planning on visiting the Bargello gallery, but we’ve got a spare half hour so why don’t we pop in and see David?” It’s such an unexpected statue if you’re used to Michaelangelo’s brooding and serious musculature as the sculpture of the Renaissance. He’s a frankly cheeky youth, in a sassy pose, stark nekkid but wearing a silly hat that you’d imagine a girl called Florence wearing to a summer picnic. He’s lithe rather than muscular and the feather from Goliath’s war helmet snakes up his leg and tickles his butt!
Lunch today was good: simple sandwiches from Antico Noe, but Maureen’s was a lovely load of herby porchetta and mine was a delicious combo of mortadella, burrata and pistachio. Dinner at Trattoria Cibreo was also great and we continued our “cucina tipica” theme as I had terrifically thinly sliced and beautifully flavoured pink roast beef, while Maureen had a peppery and delicious lampredotto stew (that’s the cow’s fourth stomach, to you and me).
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