Firenze Forever

I knew it was Sunday morning when the music in the streets finally stopped and I was able to close my eyes. Of course it wasn’t long after that my alarm went off. I’ll never really understand why Italians play music in the street until the wee hours of the morning. I took to a caffe around the corner from our hotel. We weren’t that close to all the touristic areas so you can imagine my surprise when I paid six euro for a cappuccino and pastry.

Even though I regretted going there it was nice to catch a break from the girls I was traveling with. It also gave me time to plan out our day. After all, I was the self designated travel guide and had to be on top of my game.

Piazza della Signoria

Our first stop was an 8:15 a.m. visit to one of the largest, most comprehensive galleries in the world, the Uffizi. The Palazzo degli Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices, the Tribunal and the state archive (Archivio di Stato).

The project that was planned by Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany to arrange that prime works of art in the Medici collections on the piano nobile was effected by Francis I of Tuscany, who commissioned from Buontalenti the famous Tribuna degli Uffizi that united a selection of the outstanding masterpieces in the collection in an ensemble that was a star attraction of the Grand Tour.

Firenze, some might call it the city of renovations

I just spent three days in Florence, long considered part of the “Holy Trinity” that is on every first-time tourists to Italy. The Holy Trinity includes Venice and Rome, in addition to the former.

I completed the Holy Trinity this weekend! That was my first thought on the trade ride home to Viterbo.

A little bit of history behind Firenze: It is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area.

Florence is famous for its history. A centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time, Florence is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medicifamily, and numerous religious and republican revolution.

The Weekend

The trip actually started on Friday morning when my Italian Gardens class boarded a bus on its way to Pienza. In Pienza, we looked at the Piccolomini Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) from Bernardo Rossellino and in the second half of the 15th century together with the papal palace, of which it is an integral part.

After visiting this garden, we walked around town for a few minutes before getting back on the bus and heading to Florence, a place I would call the city of renovations. No matter what time of the year you travel to this city, there’s almost an 80 percent chance that something you desired to see is closed. Doesn’t matter if its the Uffizi, Academia, Battistero, Duomo — it doesn’t matter — something is always closed. The city can afford to do this by the way because it costs a fortune to gain access to these historical places.