July 29, 2004
Welcome to Firenze (Florence to the Anglophones), city of art. Seriously, it's just unreal how much world-class art this place has. Top billing goes to the Uffizi gallery (more later), but there are at least five museums that have more than one piece you know by name. It's also a pleasant city, which somehow feels less touristy than it probably is. I purposely rolled into town early, so that I could get my choice of hostels, rather than the dregs -- as the day goes on things get more and more full. I checked in to the Ostello Santa Monica, which has an excellent location and is generally quite good. The only problem has been their "kitchen," which consists of a sink and three hotplates -- not even any dishes or pans, indeed nary a spoon. I had to eat my yogurt with a fork last night. It was not easy. But there have been some good people. I ran into two of them after a day of visiting churches (at one church a priest pegged me immediately as American, but luckily he was in favor of this -- I wonder how it's so obvious? I guess tennis shoes and digital watch go a long way), and we had a very lengthy chat about all sorts of things. I had Bill Bryson's new book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything," recommended to me, and learned a huge amount about adventuring in Patagonia. I also was fortunate enough to have it pointed out to me that the Galleria dell'Academia, which I had tried to visit earlier that day, would be open for free the next evening. Thus began the art-fest that is Florence.
Actually, to say that the art-fest began there is to undercut the churches, and especially the cathedral, which in Florence are particularly beautiful. The architect for the cathedral (whose name I momentarily forget, but it's a big one) invented new techniques to make the dome extra huge, and then Michelangelo took all that space and did his thing with it. As one might expect, most of the other important churches have a Renaissance masterpiece or two to their names as well.
But nonetheless, nothing beats a museum for sheer volume. I tried to go to the Uffizi in the morning, but the sheer volume I met was of tourists: at 10:30 there was already a two-hour line to get to the ticket office. So instead I settled for the Bargello, one of the many red-headed stepchildren of the Florence museum circuit. This is not because it's a boring collection -- on the contrary, it has Donatello's bronze David, which I'm told is the first free-standing sculpture since antiquity, and it also sports several items by Michelangelo and Giambologna. But it places a distinct third in the ranking, after the Uffizi and the Academia. This also makes it easy to get into, and inexpensive. After spending some hours there, and a couple more in a siesta, I trekked back out to the Academia, and happily met up with one of my fellow hostellers from the previous night.
The Academia has Michelangelo's David. Yes, everyone has seen it in pictures and other reproductions, but it really is peerless, and presentation is everything: the statue stands on a five-foot pedestal in an atrium designed just for it, and in such an environment it is just breathtaking. The Academia also has some of the best explanitory captions of any museum I've seen. Since it was historically an actual academy of art, most of the pieces in its collection are from its former students and teachers, and the Florentine academy had some of the best. The captions to each piece briefly trace the artistic lineage of its creator, point out high points, and (something excellent I have never seen before) make comparisons to other pieces, which are reproduced on the caption for convenience. So it is really quite easy to see which of a master's paintings most influenced his students. There was also a temporary exhibit on music in the court of the Medicis, complete with recordings of the sounds produced by period instruments in the hands of today's masters. I may be fooling myself, but I think I now understand (dimly) what's so great about the instruments of Stradavarius.
The following day I revisited the Uffizi. The ticket office opens at 8:15, so I thought maybe getting there just past 9 would do the trick. Not so much: I stood in line for about two and a half hours before finally entering the museum. But it was, generally speaking, worth it. There were several English-speaking tourguides who didn't seem to mind me tagging along (the tours may have been free). There were a whole lot of classical statues, and a whole lot of medieval and Renaissance paintings. I remember in particular some by Boticelli (e.g. Birth of Venus), Rafael, Michelangelo, and Da Vinci. But honestly, my museum endurance was beginning to wear thin by this point, so I only ("only") spent about three hours.
My remaining time in Florence was pretty low-key. At the hostel I had a top bunk right next to an east-facing window, so waking up early became inevitable. A morning walkabout uncovered a bizarre graffito featuring Gary Coleman's smiling face; this is the second one I've seen in Italy. In the early evening I went up to Piazzale Michelangelo, atop a hill near the city, for a spectacular sunset view, and a new appreciation of how ridiculously enormous the duomo is -- conspicuous consumption at its finest. Lastly, a light dinner and an early bedtime in preparation for my journey to the Eternal City.