Tuscany 5. Florence - the Jewel in Tuscany's crown

 

The Duomo from our apartment roof garden at 5.30am

The Italian train system is very good and cheap but especially good if you get a seat, which we managed for the run into Florence. We rolled into town about an hour after leaving Poggibonsi for 8 Euros (£7) each. A nice easy stroll across from the station past the famous and wildly spectacular Duomo to our accommodation, or so we thought. Florence has an interesting numbering system for houses, many have two very different numbers which don’t necessarily keep step. So with a number, road name and description of the house, you’d think it would be simple to find but it took the best part of an hour. I was convinced we’d been scammed. Fortunately we hadn’t and our top floor apartment with a roof terrace and view to the Duomo (this is the famous dome at the eastern end of the cathedral) was about a hundred yards from the cathedral as the angel flies. It was a tremendous location with every necessity close by, e.g. the gelateria was right opposite our front door. The 77 stone steps spread over eight flights up to the apartment meant that nipping out for a pint of milk was never an option though. We had a large living room/kitchen with a steel staircase to the roof terrace cutting across the kitchen sink at a height of about five and a half feet. During our stay I seem to have been compelled to introduce my head to it quite violently on a number of occasions, only drawing blood once. Incidentally, the two Duomos (or is that Duomi ?) look even more spectacular than just the one.

3 more views of the Cathedral

yes, I'm learning Italian
and almost fluent in fingers

Florence really is a cracking city just to wander around and soak up the atmosphere although it is very busy. The crowds doing nothing much more than just being there, fill the square in front of the cathedral. The queue of people waiting to get into the Cathedral are in a line three or four deep across the west front and all along the north side about four deep. Around the edges are lots of cafes and restaurants whose patrons can overdose on people-watching here. A little north of the Duomo is the biggest indoor market I’ve ever seen. It’s a high metal and glass structure looking Victorian to me, although I suppose here in Italy it should be Garibaldian. The ground floor of the market sells the raw materials, fruit, veg, meat, wine, cheese while the upper floor is an enormous food court with a central shared seating area. It is very impressive with a wide selection of food and drink providers all around the outside walls plus more in a central area.

the market inside and out

With so many visitors, the centre of Florence is full of restaurants and a big thing here is Florentine beef which I think is something to do with the breed of cattle but I’m really not sure. Huge chunks of the meat, looking like six inch thick T-bones are displayed on sets of glass shelves in restaurant windows in the same way as if it was jewellery. It doesn’t look at all inviting and I do eat meat. 

one of the smaller windows full of meat

a tree sculpture in the centre of the city

One restaurant we went to which was somewhat less meat oriented had two entertaining young waiters who we were chatting to and joking with. At the end of the meal instead of being given a small glass of some spirit as a free send off we had what looked like a magnum of Limoncello put on our table and we were just invited to help ourselves. Which we did.

Three-quarters of our group ascended the 400+ steps to the top of the Duomo for a 360 degree view over the city and distant views on what was a clear day. They took photos of me waving from our roof terrace - yes I was the missing quarter and that’s how close we were to the Duomo.

Newt emerging onto the top level of the Duomo

For me, the Uffizi Gallery was always going to be the highlight of a trip to Florence, particularly for the Botticellis. I confess that I just find The Birth of Venus and Primavera spellbinding. Botticelli’s model for many of his paintings, Simonetta Vespucci, supposed to be the most beautiful woman of the time had the face of a modern woman.  She was dead by the age of 22, probably of TB, almost 550 years ago. The danger of course with a gallery stuffed full of great works of art is that of just overdosing on it all and the Uffizi really does have some great works of art. Far too much for my taste was religious themed which is only to be expected with a collection that contains lots of early Renaisssance paintings. They’re all incredibly skilled pieces of work but I can only take a certain number of crucifixions, pietas and saints hovering about. Of course there’s more than the Uffizi here and we visited San Marcos to see the Fra Angelicos and of course, the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s monumental statue of David, which is astounding. It was carved to be seen high up but here it's just displayed on a plinth. This is why some parts of the body look slightly wrong because of the perspective.  The right hand is too big for instance.  Michelangelo with his genius, carved it so that seen from below it does all look in proportion.

one of the long galleries in the Uffizi

Medusa having a bad hair day

David

and two more detailed views 

Just as in Rome and I daresay in many other places now, the most popular places have to be booked in advance. This is not often organised terribly well. For the Uffizi, Bonnie had booked timed entry tickets. We had to queue to pick up the tickets and then queue again to get in to the gallery. It wasn’t too crowded inside so the bottleneck possibly had some benefit. For the Accademia, some bizarre system of collecting the tickets outside a nearby unspecified Carrefour supermarket was adopted but the nearest one on Google maps didn’t exist. Bonnie scooted off to a different one and got them. The problem really of course are all the tourists and I’m really glad I’m not one of them. I do love Florence though, it’s lively and vibrant, relatively compact and the centre has traffic kept pretty well out of the way. Surprisingly, the Italian drivers are far more tolerant of tourists wandering obliviously along the roads than I would have imagined. The taxis at least and possibly other vehicles have a beeper which they use instead of the normal car horn to let ambling pedestrians know they’re there instead of giving them heart attacks. Very civilised.

two views of the justifiably famous Ponte Vecchio 

We’re approaching the end of another great trip with Bonnie and Newt and we finally all got to Tuscany. At this stage we have Pisa and Lucca to see but that will be in the next blog.

what a difference half an hour makes, this is at 8.19pm

and this is at 8.49pm on the same evening

7 – 11 May 2025