Renaissance Florence

The city once ruled by the powerful Medici family is a feast for the eyes

By Rod Loboz

March 3^rd, 2024

The blue outline of the Duomo seems to be at the end of every street in Florence and to dominate every view of the city from the surrounding hills. The orange rooftop of the Dome and Giotto's Campanile of Florence Cathedral serve as beacons, guiding the crowds onto the central hub of Piazza del Duomo.

My first impression of Florence is that it has too many tourists. Tourists in Florence are like reverse vampires. They come out of their dark bat caves at sunrise, their bat leaders holding up little triangular flags, wearing receivers to guide their way around the city, and then they all disappear after dusk. In the evenings the large piazzas become more pleasant, without those big groups of tourists, snapping away at everything they see with their cameras or smartphones... shoot first, look later. There are so many tourists that taxis in the city centre have a sort of beep sound so as to warn pedestrians of their presence thereby avoiding accidents. I think to myself "I would never live here". I usually fall in love with cities with a local soul, where you go to the city centre and you meet local people enjoying their own city.

But I guess Florence does kinda sink in after a while, specially at night when the majority of the tourists are gone. The Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti Palace offer an escape from the city and are very pleasant, with beautiful views of Florence and also of the outlying countryside hills peppered with cypress tress and Renaissance style villas and estates.

Every time I heard an American, I couldn't help remembering Minus the Bear's song Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse:

"Hey let's cross the sea and get some culture. Red wine with every meal. And absinthe after dinner. We'd look so good side by side, walking back to the hotel."

The area around Palazzo Vecchio is particularly interesting, with a more local feel to it, and Piazza della Signoria, where the Palace is located, contains many sculptures and statues, including a copy of Michelangelo's David and statues by Donatello, and is in effect an open-air sculpture gallery of antique and Renaissance art.

The real David is located in the Galleria dell'Accademia, a small museum which contains other sculptures by Michelangelo and a large collection of paintings by Florentine artists, although the the main art museum in Florence is the Uffizi, which has Botticelli's Primavera and The Birth of Venus, as well as works by Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rafael and Caravaggio. One of my favourites was a set of panels representing the Seven Virtues, which includes the beautiful Fortitude, the first recorded work by Botticelli.

One afternoon I found myself in a caffè on the 5th floor of the Ospedale degli Innocenti at Piazza Santissima Annunziata. The ample terrace faced the large dome of Florence Cathedral and awarded some nice views of the city's orange rooftops. Suddenly, I was overcome with an inexplicable sense of happiness, much like all those years ago in Beijing on the terrace of a boutique hotel outlooking the Forbidden City. It was the same kind of overwhelming sensation I had felt earlier when I saw Michelangelo's David, as if my purpose in life was to witness and experience beautiful, larger than life things.