These are listed in the order in which we saw them.
Some of the treasures of this small church were removed to the Botticelli e Filippino exhibition we saw in Palazzo Strozzi -- but it was still worth visiting for the Ghirlandaio "Last Supper" in the adjoining refectory (though there is an identical version in the Museo di San Marco). This is quite a nice work, and from the looks of things, quite undervisited.
On our last visit, the interior of this church was almost entirely obscured by scaffolding, through which we wove to see a few frustrating sights, so seeing it in full glory was quite nice. Highlights included the Masaccio Trinity (more for the sense of space than for the figures), the Giotto crucifix now hung to dramatic effect in the centre of the nave, the Filippo Strozzi Chapel by Filippino Lippi, and a series of frescoes by Ghirlandaio behind the altar -- these not particularly interesting plotwise, but bright and pleasant to contemplate and scan for details. The Strozzi Chapel with frescoes by Nardo di Cione was a disappointment; the work is faded and hard to see from behind high bars.
A special exhibition in this large, imposing palazzo. It was interesting to see the chronological development and interaction of these artists with others. There were no big masterpieces, but a number of the smaller Botticelli pieces from the Uffizi were placed in a nicer context. It was also an exhibition open later in the evening, meaning we could see it after dinner when it was almost deserted.
A beautiful interior, with a number of fairly uninteresting tombs of famous people. The Giotto frescoes here are interesting, though not in as good shape as the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The entrance ticket now includes admission to the Pazzi Chapel and the Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce, meaning that the chapel is no longer a special draw and we had it to ourselves for quite some time -- the occasional tourist would stick their head in, look around the empty interior, and leave. I don't know much about architecture; it operates on me at a fairly elemental level, but I can appreciate the effect of a well-defined space, and Brunelleschi's work here is quite harmonious. The only really interesting piece in the Museo was a Cimabue Crucifixion damaged in the 1966 flood, evocative of his intact work in the Uffizi.
The piazza might have been quite spectacular had it not been completely filled by stands for a historical recreation of a soccer match played during a siege in the 1400s. On the way back from a lunch down the street, we saw signs that the final (to decide the winner among the four neighbourhoods that participate) was to be held that day, and on impulse went and bought reserved seats in the shaded section of the stands (for 30 euros each).
The game was at five in the afternoon on a Sunday. We had to pass through three gates on the street heading towards the arena, each manned by police, each thronged with people trying to argue their way through. We were shown to our seats, and were pleased that they were real seats (albeit made of plastic); the other side was in the sun and just had benches, and the unreserved ends were also in the sun, especially the side by the cathedral, which was for the "visiting" neighbourhood. The game was preceded by a lot of pageantry -- people dressed in medieval costume carrying flags, playing natural horns, wearing armour, riding horses. The players were wearing shorts that puffed out in a medieval style, and shirts that they quickly tore off. The floor of the arena was sandy, and there was a lot of wrestling involved. Players carried the ball and ran, and threw it to another player when about to be tackled. Many of the players paired off and wrestled, which led to some pretty dull bits.
The ends of the arena were fenced with low curved bars; if the ball went in under the bars, it was a point, and if it went over the bars but hit the back fence, it was half a point. Most of the players were not that young -- late twenties, early thirties, some older -- and some were clearly enforcers whose task it was to grab and pin opposing players. It was a high scoring game; the final score was eight to six and a half. The kids thought it was terrific, even though they had to abandon their seats (which were in the first row close to one goal) and stand at the railing. "I wouldn't be very good at this," Z, who is skinny as a rail, observed. After the game, the families of the victorious side went into the arena, and the costumed people filed in for some sort of closing ceremony. We walked out through a phalanx of police, presumably to keep the fans in check (we saw no signs of any trouble, apart from the melees on the field during the game).
Frustrating. One has to dodge street traffic and dubious characters (around the back, where they seem to have taken up residence) to see the sculpture in niches around this odd church, and they're nearly all copies, anyway. The church was supposed to be open so we could see the Orcagna tabernacle, but someone had set up a table in the doorway and was selling tickets to a concert later the same day. If you like sculpture, visit the Bargello, and just give this a glance as you walk by on via dei Calzuaioli.
We were denied the chance to see Michelangelo's staircase for the Laurentian Library on our last visit, so it was nice to be able to see it, finally. It is a bit over the top (the two side flights are superfluous, since the door to the library is smaller than the main flight) but set in a nice space; it seems an architect's wet dream, and I imagined the library to which it leads filled with treatises on its own approach. Alas, the library is only open when hosting temporary exhibitions, so we have another wait to confirm this.
The Medici Chapel is way over the top -- ornate, cold, imposing, ugly. Fortunately, much of it is covered in scaffolding. In contrast, Michelangelo's "Sacrista Nuova" has a certain classical coldness to it, but is much more effective (perhaps it helps that the tomb sculptures here are unfinished). Brunelleschi's chapel in the main church, on which this was intended as a comment, appears austere in comparison; we should probably have seen them in the other order.
We had visited Pisa by car on our 1995 tour of Tuscany, when Zuki was a baby and Arju was just three. All the sights are conveniently located in the Campo dei Miracoli to the northwest of the town, and it is easy to drive in, see them, and drive out. This time we took the train from Florence, and got to see more of the city on the walk from the train station in the south. Pisa is quite a pleasant city away from the intense tourist concentration. On the way up we walked past a little Gothic confection of a church called Santa Maria della Spina, parked on a high bank of the Arno, where it had been moved from its previous position on the Arno floodplain.
Since our previous visit, the Campanile (also known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) had been opened to the public, in small groups. Zuki was interested in going up, but none of the rest of us were; we would have had to pay 15 euros each, and the first available time slot was after lunch. We talked her out of it, reasoning that we could get a better view of the Campanile from below than from on it.
Instead, we bought a combined ticket for the Baptistry and Duomo, and went first into the Baptistry. This was the largest of the three that we saw, and after looking at the carved baptismal font and pulpit, we climbed up to the grand balcony circling it halfway up, and then up the dome, where there was unfortunately no access to the lantern, just small windows out of which we could peer to get views. The best one was across to the facade of the Duomo, with the Campanile peeking out from the rear.
The Duomo has a lot of nice works inside -- a Cimabue mosaic in the apse, a pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, and a huge bronze lamp beside it hanging from the ceiling, which reputedly was of importance in Galileo working out the theory of the pendulum. But as in Siena, it is the overall effect of the striped interior that is the most lasting impression (that, and the volume of tourists).
It was a warm day, and tourists were clustered in the shade by the facade and the north wall of the Duomo. Walking around the rear of the Duomo, we saw the Campanile (not nearly as elegant as Giotto's in Florence, but then Giotto's isn't fatigued by appearing on every takeout pizza box in North America). A small number of people were queued up to get in at their prearranged time, and lots of others were taking pictures where they pretended to be pushing the tower back up. Zuki and I took a couple of quick snaps and joined A and N in the shade of the tourist kiosks, where we could contemplate the tower at more leisure.
Then we headed down into the market to look for lunch. Two of our options turned out to be evening-only, but the third was open, and we had quite a nice lunch before walking back to the train station along the main shopping street, which had much less tourist schlock on it than the equivalent route in Florence.
There was one too many tour groups crowded into the main ground-floor room showing Fra Angelico oils, but the cells upstairs were numerous enough that we could see his frescoes without having to fight for position (we gave up entirely on Savonarola's cells). His Annunciation at the head of the stairs is quite striking, though its location and the glass protecting it makes it difficult to contemplate without being barrelled into from behind. A Ghirlandaio Last Supper, apparently identical in composition to the one in the Ognissanti, occupies one wall of what is now the gift shop; the one in the Ognissanti is easier to see, in a more peaceful setting, and is free to boot. This was my favourite museum of my 1982 visit, perhaps because of its modest scale. It was nice this time, but by no means a highlight.
A single room containing a Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno and some sinopie (preliminary drawings for frescoes) of his. Not worth a detour, but worth stopping in at if you're in the vicinity of Piazza San Marco.
This little church was a short distance from our apartment, set into a small piazza on a fairly touristy stretch between the Ponte Vecchio and the Pitti Palace. It is worth visiting for one terrific painting: Pontormo's Deposition, with Jesus looking like a heatstroke victim at a folk festival, surrounded by a swirl of figures, one holding a wad of blue cloth at dead centre of the composition. Well worth the euro coin it took to get it lit, even though we had to peer at it through bars.
Mostly a very nice space (if you ignore the altar) though for art there's one nice altarpiece by Filippino Lippi. The sacristy is lovely, and the piazza outside is one of the few with trees and benches, giving it more of an intimate feel (if you ignore the odd slightly seedy character). Weekday and Saturday morning there are fruit and vegetable vendors.
We were there at 8:15am after having reserved by phone, but we stood in the wrong line, and had to get sent off to the right one. It didn't matter much; by 8:30 we were inside (in contrast to the two-hour wait we had on the previous trip), and climbed up to begin with the triple whammy of Duccio, Cimabue, and Giotto. Even at that hour of the morning tour groups were passing through, with their annoying habit of standing in front of what we wanted to see while looking at their guide talking. It required a fair amount of back and forth work to be left alone with works. We hadn't prepared the kids as much as when they were smaller; this time we left the art books around for voluntary reading, and they had done enough leafing through to be able to recognize names and works. It's an excellent collection, not diluted by acres of minor works as in the Louvre; I won't bother describing the highlights, as they are in any guidebook. We missed the Gentile da Fabriano Adoration (being restored), and the rooms with Giovanni Bellini (of which we were to see plenty in Venice shortly), Giorgione (probably off at the international exhibition) and Mantegna were all closed. We thought we had missed the Caravaggio and Guido Reni rooms, but these had been moved downstairs into newly-renovated space. There was also a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, which was mildly interesting for the first few rooms before the contrast with the genuine article upstairs just made it seem silly. As a final bonus, we went to the small room on the first floor which houses a rotating display of drawings, and had some excellent works by Uccello, Michelangelo, and others all to ourselves.
The highlight of this church, the Capella Sassetti frescoed by Ghirlandaio, was under restoration, with a modern multilevel structure filling the entire space, and experts at work when we visited. From what we could see of the cleaned frescoes, they will be quite stunning on our next visit. It was interesting to watch the work being done, and we had seen the Ghirlandaio altarpiece in the Palazzo Strozzi exhibition. As a consolation, we had the Cappella Bartolini-Salimbeni, whose unadorned interior (frescoes by Lorenzo Monaco) gave us a sense of what it must have been like to be in such a place before the Baroque "restorers" came and wrecked everything.
We hadn't gone to this museum on any of our previous visits, which was clearly a mistake. There is some terrific sculpture here -- Michelangelo's "Brutus", a decent sculpture by Ammannati ("Leda and the Swan") to make up for the awful Big Whitey in the Piazza della Signoria, lots of nice works by Cellini, a loggia containing an amusing series of birds in bronze by Giambologna, Donatello's fey "David" (preferable to the more famous work by Michelangelo), Ghiberti and Brunelleschi's trial panels for the Baptistry doors (both N/A and I, looking at them at different times, came to the same conclusion that the judges had, that each had their strengths and it was impossible to prefer one over the other). There were some rooms of jewelry, ivory, and coins, which I skipped over but the kids found interesting, and a bunch of della Robbia terracotta, which even at close range looked kitschy to me. The place was almost empty, an absurd contrast to the Uffizi.
We got up early, intending to climb the dome before it got hot (though it turned out to be a cooler, windy day), but it was closed due to some sort of meeting taking place inside. So we went off to the Bargello, and returned a bit before 10:30 to find a modest line for the dome and a very long line for the interior of the Duomo. The climb up was pretty straightforward, broken up by various galleries and at one point a passage along the inside of the dome high up above the floor. The last little bit was a steep staircase going straight up in the space between inner and outer domes, resulting in some weird perspective. We emerged at the base of the lantern, with cooling breeze and terrific views. Z was a bit unnerved by the height, but recovered and took some photos, and we pointed out various landmarks we had been to. It was definitely worth the climb, and we pitied the people who had climbed the campanile, at a lower height and with a rooftop terrace in full sun. After the descent, we discovered the line for the Duomo had vanished, and we went in to look around. It was not as bare as I remembered it from previous visits; perhaps reading up properly on it helped.
On our way back from another great lunch at Mario, we noticed that the Baptistry was open, and went in. It's a lovely space, and there aren't many tourists inside, since most of them satisfy their curiosity by peeking in through the open door, thereby ducking the entrance fee. With the aid of binoculars we studied the early, Byzantine-inspired mosaics, a foreshadowing of what we would see in Venice.
This is a small cloister without an attached church, with monochrome frescoes by Andrea del Sarto of the life of John the Baptist. A nice space and a nice change from polychrome; admission is free, but it is only open three mornings a week, so you have to plan ahead.
Florence's "high society" church, according to our books, and the one where we saw the largest number of people actually praying (eight or so old women, one of whom came up and admonished N for letting A go in with a centimetre of flesh showing at her waist -- A was quite indignant). We couldn't see a lot of the works -- the Andrea del Castagno chapels were covered in scaffolding, the tribune and cloister were roped off -- and the ones we could see, such as Michelozzo's Tempietto, were more overblown Medici excess. We could have skipped this one.
A nice piazza outside, steps on which the African men who usually sell sunglasses at the Duomo and Piazza della Signoria seem to hang out on at lunchtime, and two nice early cloisters by Brunelleschi inside. We didn't go into the small museum.
We decided to try and see whether we could get in quickly in the afternoon, and arriving at five minutes to three we were told that the next entry available was at 3:45, but we could watch a 40-minute video on the chapel. The video, projected on a large screen with English translation provided by radio headsets, turned out to be quite nice (though A was a bit annoyed by the propaganda for the Carmine order and for Christianity in general), and prepared us well for the visit to the chapel. This was supposed to be timed for 15 minutes, but they didn't shoo us out, and we stayed for about 25 minutes. Most of the other visitors looked at the frescoes for a few minutes and left, or sat in the benches outside and read books; we were alone in the chapel proper for much of the time, noticing details and discussing composition. It's a stunning concentration of art, by three master painters (Masaccio, Masolino, and Filippino Lippi), working harmoniously yet with individual differences in style evident. This was one of the highlights of the whole trip.
This museum has been modernized, with detailed information panels in both English and Italian, good lighting, and a sensible arrangement, resulting in a very nice experience that I would recommend to any visitor to Venice. Highlights included the early sculpture intended for the facade but removed by the Medici; Michelangelo's unfinished and mutilated Pieta; the marble choir balconies by Donatello and Lucca della Robbia (much better than his terracotta work); Donatello's wooden sculpture of Mary Magdalene; original equipment used in the construction of the dome; and some of Ghiberti's original panels for the east doors of the Baptistry, displayed at eye level in a bright and airy atrium.
We visited Siena on a day trip; since we had spent a week living just outside the city walls in the summer of 1996, we weren't trying to be comprehensive. Our plan was to visit the Campo, the Duomo, the Baptistry, maybe the Palazzo Publico, and if the weather was clear and not too hot, we would consider climbing the tower (since the kids had so much fun climbing the Duomo in Florence). It was pleasant in Florence when we caught the bus, but windy and cool -- perhaps too cool -- when we got off in Siena. We walked down to the Campo and around it for a bit. It was too early for cafes, and we're not really park-at-a-table types.
So we went off to the Duomo. There was an admission charge for the interior, which was free before; but this included the Piccolomini Library, which we'd intended to pay for anyway, and the money had clearly gone to restoration. Many more of the marble pavements featuring saints, philosophers, and mystics were on display (in the past they had been covered by cardboard for most of the year). But there were also many more tourists than we remembered. The striped interior was as striking as we remembered it.
When we came out, it was ominously overcast, and while we waited in the Piazza trying to figure out what to do, the first drops fell. Quickly we moved into the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which we had planned to visit in any case. We'd been to the Pinacoteca twice; the first time, after the Uffizi, it seemed dark and dull, but the second time, after some study, was much more rewarding. This time we hadn't done the studying, and we knew the Duomo Museum didn't have much to capture us, but there were three things: the original sculptures from the cathedral facade, a lovely room with a large Duccio altarpiece, and a path leading out on top of the unfinished nave of the huge cathedral whose construction was cut short forever by the Black Death in 1348. This offers great views of the Duomo and Campanile, the Campo, and the surrounding countryside. It was wet and cold, and the rainstorm sweeping across the landscape to the east was fortunately not spitting lightning.
When we left the museum, it was drizzling very lightly, but we promptly got lost (we had only the inadequate map in the Cadogan guide to Florence) and it started raining more heavily. Sticking to the sides of buildings where we could, we eventually made our way by a roundabout route to Osteria del Castelvecchio, our favourite restaurant from our previous visit (back when the geography was more familiar), where we had a long, indulgent lunch.
The weather showed no signs of improving, so we headed for the bus, stopping at the Baptistry, at a store a little ways out from it where the kids bought contrade (neighbourhood) flags, and at Nannini, where we bought panpepato to take home and ricciarelli to eat back in Florence.
This is the car park on the hill to the southeast of the historic centre with a good view of the city. We climbed up here fairly early in the morning on the way to San Miniato al Monte, before the tour buses started to arrive, though we couldn't do much about the trinket stalls and people arriving in their own cars. Half the parking lot was taken up with a stage and chairs; they were presenting open-air opera in the evenings, which I suppose is better than cars, but not much. (I like opera; I don't like amplified opera presented in parking lots.) The view is in fact worthwhile, and the one picture I have of Florence in the photo album I made from my 1982 trip is taken from here.
We took the long way around the back from Piazzale Michelangelo, which was a pleasant enough walk (it felt like deserted rural lanes, not part of a city). The view from here has too much hill in front and not enough city beyond. But the real reason to come up this far is for the church, whose facade can be seen from most of the city. The interior is even more striking; it was lit mostly by light from the open doors and the windows in the facade, and had the dark, glittering feel of the Basilica San Marco in Venice due to Byzantine-influenced mosaics. Best of all, it was nearly deserted, though we did have to wait for a tour group to stop hanging around outside. Individual works of art aren't particularly striking; it's the whole atmosphere that is worthwhile.
On our 1995 trip, after we had to give up our apartment on a Saturday, we had planned to stay in Prato and commute into Florence for a couple of days. But the hotel we had chosen was a bit disappointing, and after a frustrating second day visit to Florence, we returned to the small, dingy room, looked at each other, and decamped. We got in the car and headed for Lucca, which we had skipped earlier as lacking compelling sights. What it did have was a nice, quiet atmosphere that gave our trip a warm low-key ending.
But that was in the fall, several years ago. On a day trip from Florence, we discovered that Lucca in July has a lot more visitors -- not so many North Americans and Asians, but more northern Europeans. There were rather too many for the faint charms of the place. The sleepy Piazza Napoleone had been turned into another open-air theatre, this one for international rock acts. We walked up and into San Michele in Foro, the church with the facade much bigger than the church itself; on the door was a lascivious drawing of a loose-haired braless woman intended to show how one was not supposed to look if one wished to go inside. Then up to San Frediano, which was much quieter. From there we wandered over to the Piazza Anfiteatro, an oval piazza built on the ruins of the old Roman amphitheatre. Arju was amazed to realize at this point that we had pretty much crossed the compact old city within the fortress walls.
Lucca, being small and flat, and with car traffic restricted, has a lot of bicycles. Locals seemed less inclined than on our last visit to steer away from tourists (I don't blame them -- if my town was being invaded like that, I would aim at them and make them scatter, also), and the problem was compounded by tourists having rented bicycles but having not rented the sense to use them properly in crowded spaces. We walked past the Torre Guinigi, a truncated medieval tower notable for having trees growing on top of it -- I would have considered climbing it with the kids, but there was a party of noisy German teenagers going in.
It was time to get our lunch possibilities nailed down, but we had a problem. The places that sounded best in the Cadogan guide weren't on streets that appeared on the map. We went to look for a tourist information office, but couldn't find it where the guidebook said it was. Walking back by Via Santa Lucia, we suddenly came across a store at which we had bought good organic lentils on the previous trip. I went in and bought a kilo and a half of farro to take home, which Naomi gamely carried the rest of the day. We found a pharmacy that had a map of other pharmacies on the wall beside it, which provided enough detail to locate our first choice. But it was closed for a week's vacation. I looked over the Cadogan map again, searching for another tourist office, and found the street for our second choice, all the way out to the northwest. We walked out there (it wasn't that far) only to discover it was closed for renovation. At this point we were near the car park on the west side, where one of the main tourist offices was, so I went in and got a map.
We located a third choice, and were seated, only to have a fairly disappointing meal. After that, we more or less gave up on Lucca, and walked back to the train station by way of the Baptistry, the Duomo (oddly scrunched up against the building next to it, requiring an asymmetrical facade), and the top of the city walls.
We hadn't planned on seeing the Pitti Palace, which doesn't have any really compelling works of art in it, but we thought the kids might like to see the interior of a palazzo after having walked past the forbidding exteriors of so many of them on narrow Florentine streets. So we went early in the morning, when the place was still quite empty (as a B-list attraction, it seems to attract hordes later the day). The building itself is crass, starting with the intimidating courtyard lined with facades and columns made from huge blocks of rusticated stone, and continuing with the overstuffed interior furnishings and heavyhanded ceiling frescoes. But there were some nice moments inside: a Filippo Lippi Madonna, some nice Raphael portraits, a possible Giorgione allegory, some Titians, and a Canova statue. Court painters, alas, were quite overrepresented.
The kids wanted to see this, for some reason. Zuki expected labyrinths, and I wasn't sure that there weren't any; I'm not sure what Arju expected. It was a lot of hot uphill walking along to reach cold, boring fountains surrounded by huge clouds of mosquitos and idiotic statuary. We finally located the Grotta di Buonalenti, which looked like a parody of a kitschy cave. A complete waste of time, which we redeemed only by a forced march across town and a lovely lunch at Trattoria Mario, our last restaurant meal in Florence.