Florence—Uffizi Gallery and the Duomo

Another night train, got to the Florence train station around 8:30, with map and hand and a little help, we found our hotel to settle in for the night.  Two days in Florence to celebrate the art of the Renaissance.  Without taking you back to art history class in college, the Bubonic Plague wiped out half of Florence’s population in the 1350’s, the Renaissance commenced in 1401 and, in Florence, at least, debatably lasted around 100 years.  It led Europe out of the Middle Ages as a for-runner to our modern world.

When you talk Renaissance, you think art, and that is what the next two days are about. We started at the Uffizi Gallery, arguably the greatest collection of Italian Paintings anywhere featuring da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Botticelli.  (art history class was nothing like this)  My favorite was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.  Because it is off-season, we could stand and contemplate this masterpiece for as long as we wanted.  Stunning.   No photography in the museum, these are from Wikipedia.

We are using Rick Steve’s Audio Guide’s on my iPhone, he is great at taking us through museums that are overwhelming on their own.  He walked us the the Uffizi.  Another stunner is Michelangelo's The Holy Family.  His only surviving easel painting.  The depth and color was amazing.

Outside of the Uffizi Gallery is the Piazza della Signoria, a large Piazza with my reproductions of famous sculptures from all over.  This isn’t low brow art.  Reproductions have been commissioned for centuries to keep the originals protected and out of the weather. Examples below:

    

Perseus with the head of Medusa, and Rape of the Sabine Women

We finished the day at the Duomo, or the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.  It was started around 1300 and finished 100 years later, but with no dome.  The technology wasn’t in place in Florence at the time.  It took another architect and era for the dome to be finished by Filippo Brunelleschi.  He fashioned it after the Pantheon in Rome built by the Romans in 126AD.   Unfortunately the formula for concrete, that the Romans used, had been long forgotten, so wood and bricks made do.  Additionally, the final marble clad wasn’t installed until the mid 1800’s.  Bricks till then.  They chose to use white, pink and green marble.  We thought it looked nice, however, in art circles it is nicknamed the “Pajama Cathedral”!

    

Finally, another highlight were the brass doors on the “Baptistery” across from the Duomo.  They were cast by Lorenzo Ghiberti, and reviewed by Michelangelo, who said they were the “Gates of Paradise”.    Ghiberti used mathematical laws to create the illusion of receding distance.  Spectacular. Below are two of the ten Biblical vignettes on the double doors.

    

Venice in a day

Took the night train from Milan to Venice for an 8:30pm arrival.  Our hotel was easy to find, just minutes from the Piazza San Marco, the centerpiece of Venetian history and culture.  “blocks” are small, “streets” are smaller.  Blocks are the width of buildings built 4-500 years ago.  Streets are the width of the horse and push carts of the same era, 4-6 feet wide.  We felt we were in a time machine.

Because we saw so much, I will include photos of the highlights.  In background, Venice was the “center of the cultural and trade world” for around three hundred years from the 16th through the 18th centuries.  All trade in Europe and the Middle East passed through Venice.  The merchant’s decadence and wealth were profound..  It is laced together by 400 bridges and 2,000 alley ways. However, its population has halved in the last 30 years though as the city is sinking slowly in the muck it was originally built on 1500 years ago.  With weight and global warming, the city continues to disappear, many of the palaces built by merchants 500 years ago, which are now hotels and apartments; the first floor has been abandoned to the sea.  Below, the highlights in no particular order:

    

On the left, the world’s first “digital” clock dating from the Renaissance.  It is 11:05am. It changes every 5 minutes. On the right, a typical alley way.

    

On the left, a typical gondola, there are now 500, in Venice’s heyday, there were 100,000!  On the right, a view of the Piazza San Marco, one of the biggest in Europe, the length of two football fields!

    

The Campinale.  This is fairly modern, built in 1902 to replace the ancient once that collapsed.  It rings hourly 24/7!  On the right is the Grand Canal.  Where all the merchants lived and traded.   Spectacular.

    

The Rialto Bridge, this one was built in 1588, the third in this location.  It is probably the most photographed landmark in Venice.  On the right is the Basilica di San Marco.  Built in the 11th century to replace an earlier church. It has a distinct Eastern-style architecture underlining Venice’s connection with the Byzantium.  It’s interior is primarily gold mosaics.  A trophy chest from the booty returned by the sea captains during Venice’s heyday.

It was cold!  How cold was it?  32 degrees with 100% humidity.  Many layers to stay warm.  Moderate number of tourists, primarily from Asian countries.  We can’t imagine what it is like in the summer.  Gridlock.

Discovering Milan

Busy day, too busy.  Didn’t wake up till 8am.  Need to set the alarm tomorrow morning.  Caught up on sleep lost on the plane.  First stop, Piazza del Duomo.  One of the largest Gothic churches in the world.  Like always, in a cross shape, 515ft. long and 301ft. wide.  It was started in the 1300’s and wasn’t finished for 500 years! Its most startling feature is its roof.  135 spires and innumerable statues and gargoyles.  A few pictures below.

    

   

Incredible carvings on the outside, that is David and Goliath on the right, graphic!

    

The gargoyles were the downspouts!  Too many things to take pictures of.

    

One of Da Vinci’s students carved the statue on the left, unusual because it is very “anatomical” and in the church.  On the right is the corpse of a cardinal!  He has a silver face mask on, but those are his real hands, his cardinal ring is on his dried up finger!

 

After the Duomo, we headed across town to find Da Vinci’s legendary 24 ft. long horse he rendered in clay.   In 1499 the French invaders destroyed by using it for target practice  It was finally reproduced and cast in bronze in 1982.  Only problem was, we ran out of time and had to abandon our search and never did find the horse.  Next we went to the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology.  Again, we didn’t have enough time to really explore it, because we had a 3:15 viewing of da Vinci’s famous “Last Supper”.

This was stunning.  I would rank with the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower or Angkor Wat.  After 500 years of neglect and inept restoration, 21 years of correct rehabilitation ended in 1999.  Indeed, Leonardo used a “dry” fresco approach to its rendering, and it began to deteriorate within 6 years of its completion in 1498.  25 people are admitted every 15 minutes.  Your group goes through three rooms for “dehumidifying” before you are allowed into the refectory.  Miraculously, it survived WWII bombing, the entire abbey was flattened except that wall! 

No pictures were allowed, but to gaze at it for the 15 minutes was extraordinarily moving. Indeed, a masterpiece.

Arriving and driving in Milan

Routine, long flight from SFO.  Although better than most.  SFO to JFK, 5 hours, then JFK to Milan 8 hours.  We left San Francisco at 7am on Sunday and arrived in Milan at 8am on Monday.  Ready to start our adventure.

First, rent a car for the day.  Initially we were going to do some skiing in the Dolomites.  Then we decided, before we left, to just drive up to the mountains.  Then, once we got here, we discovered that to drive to the Dolomites from Milan is a day long proposition with no guarantee that we would see any of the scenery.  Indeed, in Milan it is rainy, a bit snowy and very foggy and cloudy.  Not a good day for sightseeing.  We decided to drive around Lake Como, closer to Milan and made famous, or infamous by George Clooney and his parties at his vaca house.

First, driving in Italy’s cities.  One word, big mistake. (two words). I am struggling trying to drive at 110-120 kph (70-75mph), while everyone else is blasting past me like I am in reverse.  And if, shudder the thought, I get in the left lane to pass a truck that is only going 100kph, I have an Italian in his Audi or BMW on my bumper honking, blinking his lights and throwing up his hands in frustration.  As I merge again to the right he is 20 feet past me before I am fully in the right lane. Add to that the rain, and in the smaller towns around Lake Como, there seemed to be several hundred of those, the roads are very curvy, very narrow, not two lane like the Autobahn, but that didn’t slow anybody down but me! I pulled over numerous times to let everyone else pass.  We kept the car for the day and returned it in the afternoon.  I was exhausted.  I can’t imagine what it is like in the summer with 10X the people that are here now.  Wait…..take a taxi.

Another interesting thing was our drive back from Lake Como.  We started on the west side went north, then came down south on the eastern side.  Only problem, no view.  It wasn’t obstructed by trees or buildings, most of the road was buried!  Tunnel after tunnel.  Miles long, curving, I have never seen anything like that either.  It seems they just started tunneling on one end and didn’t stop till they came out the other end.

Finally, we took the train from the airport to the main terminal, walked 40 minutes to the hotel, (I read the map thinking it would be 10), and settled in with a long shower and dinner.  The nice owner-lady of Gala Hotel recommended a small place down the street, pizza and raviolis –Italian Style—excellent.  Then, 10 hours of catch up sleep.