Firenze, Italia

This weekend almost our entire studio went to Florence for the weekend. Eight people from my apartment got up early on Saturday morning (I even overslept, oops) and took cabs to the train station. Our train left at 6:00 am. Normally the trip would have taken 1.5 hours, but that train cost 35 €, so we opted for the 4 hour – 15 € train instead, which wasn’t a bad way to go since we all slept.
Once in town we dropped our things off at the hostel Jeff, Liz, and I were staying at (everyone else was only doing a day trip) after passing through a beautiful piazza full of trees, many of which had dropped their leaves (of course I had to go shuffling and running through them, I’m missing fall in New England!) We then made our way to the Accedemia, the museum that houses Michelangelo’s David sculpture (the original! A replica is in a piazza in town, but we later discovered it to be covered in scaffolding.) The museum cost 20 €, which is crazy steep, but we justified it by having saved 45 € on train tickets, and I’m so glad we did! The David was absolutely beautiful; he looked so lovingly carved, and the level of detail was amazing. We were all especially impressed by the veins on his hand reaching up his arm. Michelangelo also lined these up with the veins in the marble in places, which was amazing. We also learned that the sculpture was originally intended to be placed 140 meters up the façade of a church, so Michelangelo adjusted his proportions accordingly. Now that David is viewed on the ground, his torso, arms, and hands all look slightly too big-fun fact. Technically pictures weren’t allowed, but none of the guards seemed to be too strict about it so I snapped a few. The rest of the museum was great too; there was a series of sculptures, also by Michelangelo, called the Prisoners, of people halfway emerged from marble blocks. There was were two other special exhibits; one of 1300’s gold-leaf triptychs (the kind with really strange perspectives, gold circular halos, and the baby Jesus portrayed as a smaller fully grown man, not a baby) and the other of old instruments: we saw 1700’s pianos, all sorts of string instruments, a pair of hurdy gurdies, crazy looking horns and clarinets, and a 1600’s oval piano/harpsichord type thing.
After the Accedemia, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed towards the Duomo. Now, a little bit of background info: I studied Brunelleschi’s dome in my senior year at Emma Willard in my history of architecture class. We learned about it in depth in our history course at RPI. There’s a Threadless shirt of Florence that includes the dome (http://www.threadless.com/product/1246/Renaissance), and then of course there’s Michelle’s cake (see previous entry). Basically, I’m totally in love with this work of architecture. So when we turned a corner (after watching the bell tower grow as we got closer) and suddenly saw the dome rise in front of us, I nearly cried (again. Yes, I’m a huge archie-dork.) Jeff, Liz, and I walked around the church, totally in awe of its size and level of detail. It’s clad in white, green, and pink marble, all of which are beautifully inlaid together to create beautiful designs. When you stepped back, it was almost hard to distinguish what was the actual geometry of the building and what was just ornament. Jeff did a sketch, but Liz and I decided that that was too ambitious and just walked around.
When the rest of the group met up with us, we again marveled at it, and then went inside. I have to say, the interior was actually a bit disappointing. For such an ornamented exterior, the interior was quite plain. The only saving grace was the floor. It too, was made of beautiful stone inlay. The patterns were exquisitely crafted, and often set up crazy illusions and forced perspectives. We had fun taking pictures (Viv got some magnificent shots), then went outside and got in line to climb the dome. The dome itself is a constructed of a double layer system, so much of our climb was actually between these two walls. Once the dome started to curve, things got pretty interesting! Before entering the dome itself, though, we were able to walk along its interior perimeter along a balustrade underneath the massive circular windows and frescoes. It offered a great view of the crossing and nave below, much of which was actually roped off at ground level. We finally reached the cupola after 463 stairs in total and were granted a 360 degree view of the city. As magnificent as it was, I hate to say that I’ve almost gotten used to views like this! We took plenty of pictures though, and then began our decent.
We then headed to the markets near San Lorenzo, which are infamous for their leather goods. Many people on the trip were planning on buying jackets or purses, so we spent quite a while browsing the carts, haggling with vendors, and just exploring. I bought a beautiful sketchbook for myself and a few gifts, but other than that just had fun wandering around with people. Once done, we headed towards Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge lined with shops. On our way there, however, we crossed through Piazza della Signoria. This housed a small arcade filled with statues, the David replica covered in scaffolding, the Palazzo Vecchio, and led to the Uffizi, another art museum. We spent quite a while marveling at all the statues, including “Hercules and Cacus” by Bandinelli, “Perseus with the Head of Medusa” by Cellini, and “The Rape of the Sabine Women” by Giambologna. All of them were fabulous, and seeing them outdoors was such a wonderful experience. We then walked through the Uffizi courtyard to get to the river, where we walked up to the Ponte Vecchio. Most of the shops were swanky jewelry shops, so we crossed and began to look for a place for dinner (it was early for Italians, maybe 6:30 or so, but we were starving!) We found a decent place where Liz and Jeff each ordered a Florentine steak and swore it was worth every penny. I ordered a traditional Tuscan soup that I can’t remember the name of. It was delicious, though: very thick (I probably could have eaten it with a fork) with potatoes, carrots, peas, bits of bread, beans, and who knows what else.
At this point the day trippers had to start heading back for their train, so we meandered through town looking for gelato. We found a place on Piazza della Signoria that had an amazing array of flavors: Vivian got pine nut (delicious!) and I got mango and blackberry (up until last night I’d only ever seen raspberry or mixed berry, but never just black). Everyone’s choices were great! Jeff, Liz, and I then headed back to our hostel to rest for a bit, since at this point we had been on our feet for 9 hours, excluding dinner. We got back, rested for a while, then headed back to the Duomo to climb the bell tower this time.
We arrived just before closing time, and I was very relieved when they let us up. In total it was 414 stairs (yes, we climbed nearly 900 in one day!), but was subdivided into floors along the tower. The stairs themselves were within the walls with tiny occasional windows, and then we would reach floors that were open air (with wire grates over the windows of course), say “Oh, this must be it”, then find more stairs! This ended up happening probably 3-4 times until we finally reached the very top. I didn’t expect to be at the level we were; we were walking right next to the red tile roof along a balustrade! (Don’t worry, there was a metal cage on all sides and overhead.) The view was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. This and the Duomo in Milano have definitely been the two highlights of the entire semester goes, as far as completely taking my breath away (hundreds of stairs aside!) When we were at the top, the half moon was positioned just to the left of the Duomo’s cupola and the whole city sprawled out illuminated below. I took some beautiful, beautiful pictures with my tiny bendy tripod (great investment!) and even got a panoramic of the side with the dome. We spent quite a while just walking around, pointing out landmarks we had seen during the day, and just generally oohing and ahhing. We took a self-timed group picture with my tripod, then somehow managed to pull ourselves away. On the walk down, I took lots of pictures of the side of the church’s nave, since we were so close to it and could really appreciate the detail. Even at the top of the church, something few people would ever have seen, there’s an incredible amount of detail! It was totally incomprehensible. We then set out for a merry-go-round we had spotted earlier and had fun being 3 of the only 5 or 6 people on the ride. We wandered around for a while just enjoying the city and eventually headed back to our room. The city as a whole felt very safe though, and we had fun meandering. It was hard to get lost because the city (or at least city center) is quite tiny compared to what we’ve been used to in Torino and Roma.
The next morning we set out with the intention of going back to the market for hats for Liz and Jeff that they had spotted yesterday, visiting the Uffizi gallery, climbing the hill to Piazzale Michelangelo to get a panoramic view of the city, then catching our train. We ended up heading out a bit earlier than we wanted, so by the time we got to Uffizi the line was huge and we wouldn’t have been able to do the collection justice. Upsetting, but it did leave time for us to definitely do the panoramic view (which probably wouldn’t have fit in had we done the museum). We walked down along the river (beautiful lighting), climbed the hill, turned around, and saw the whole city spread out before us. Quite touristy, but it was amazing nonetheless. We wandered around, took far too many pictures (no such thing!), then headed back for our train. We ended up just making it there in time, grabbed some lunch, then got on the train. We slept, read, and chatted for the 4 hour ride back, and were all fully satisfied with our visit.
We leave bright and early for our hilltowns trip tomorrow morning and are gone until Thursday, but more updates on that when I get back!

PICTURES: the dome by night, the view from the hill, and a view of the Rape statue with Palazzo Vecchio in the background