charismatic megafauna since 1985

Florence, day 1.5

Today was rainy like yesterday was sunny. It wasn’t raining when I woke up, but it started shortly after my walk up the Duomo and with few exceptions it’s been like that for the entire day. After a strange breakfast of a bacon and cheese omelet (yes, the bacon was inside the omelet) I decided that I’d hit up the sights that were closer to the hostel. I hope that tomorrow’s weather will be nicer.

My first stop for the day was the Duomo. For those of who skipped my last post (and who’d blame you?), the Duomo is the cathedral of Florence and it’s got a giant dome. So giant that it’s 463 steps from the floor to the top, or at least the top that they let tourists in. For the last half, you’re actually walking between the dome you can see from the inside of the church and the dome that you can see outside. It’s a dome-within-a-dome design.

The view from the top was very pretty. I looked out over all the red-roofed buildings, some other churches, and over to the mountains and hills around the city. A nice sight to start my morning of touristing, and the only nice outdoor view I’d get all day. By the time I got back down the ground and out the door it had started to rain. Luckily I’d noticed that it rained a bit overnight and brought my raincoat.

Right behind the Duomo is the Duomo Musuem (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo) which houses artworks that used to be in the Duomo at various other times. There’s a good Michelangelo sculpture (Pietá) and a Donatello (Mary Magdalene) as well as other pretty paintings and sculptures. As I write all these posts about the art I’m seeing, I feel myself using the same words and phrases again and again to describe the pieces. I’m sorry, dear readers, for that. It’s partially because I don’t have the memory or the vocabulary to accurately describe 6 hours later what they were like. It’s also partially because, after 3 weeks of looking at art, I’m getting a bit burnt out on it. I hope you’ll forgive me.

I tried to go to the Medici Chapel next, but they wouldn’t let me take my water bottle in with me (just like an airport :() so i went somewhere else to give me time to finish my water. I’d rather finish it than just go outside and pour it out because I’ve been having some trouble staying hydrated even with the water bottle so I’m doing whatever I can to get lots of water. Instead of the chapel, I walked up the street to Museum of San Marco. On it are painted lots of frescoes by the “early Renaissance master” Fra Angelico. On the 2nd floor are over 40 cells where monks used to live with decorations by Fra Angelico and other monks who lived there. One of the cells was occupied by Savonarola who turned Florence temporarily into a theocracy and burned a lot of books and paintings and such before things turned around and he got himself burned at the stake in the main square.

After eating part of my lunch (one of my cheese/tomato sandwiches and one of my apples) and finishing my water I wandered back down to the Chapel. The first floor isn’t impressive, it’s just some marked tombs. The second floor is the chapel and it’s massive. Dedicated just to the Grand Dukes of the Medici’s, it’s a giant octagonal room, done up with various kinds of marble and a fresco on the ceiling from Michelangelo. It’s under serious restoration now, though, after a piece of the marble ceiling fell down in 1999 and they discovered that the building was falling apart.

I came back to the hostel for a bit afterwards to take a nap. I wasn’t particularly tired, but didn’t really have anything else to do and wanted to get out of the rain. I made one last stop for the day at the Church of Santa Maria Novella, but other than a cool trompe l’oeil fresco on the ceiling there’s not much to say.

Tomorrow, the plan is:

• Uffizi Gallery (early, to beat the lines)
• Bargello
• Science Museum
• Church of Santa Croce

and then probably hanging out at the hostel. I don’t imagine that those things will take a whole day, and not having to rush will be nice.