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Firenze As tourists, we knew that going from Siena to Firenze was like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but we wanted to see the Uffizi, and so we jumped.

new and old in the Italian countryside

The bus from Siena took us through some of the newly industrialized valleys of Tuscany, where large square warehouse-like structures displace vineyards and farmlands. Before the 20th Century the agricultural land was considered too valuable even for people to live on, but times have changed.

Our bus dumped us in unknown territory, but we had a great map, and found our way easily to our hotel -- well, the finding was easy but the getting was not. Firenze is a labyrinth of narrow streets choked even in the so-called "pedestrian zone" with parked cars and motorscooters, then assaulted by whizzing phalanx of same driving insanely aggressively. They know where they're going, and seem either to resent pedestrians or consider them as interesting obstacles to play with. Sidewalks aren't meant for walking; they're where restaurants and merchants conduct their business. We never did figure out where walkers really are supposed to go ...maybe "away" would be best.

narrow streets and splendid buildings

the Duomo is the old city's center

We had some errands to run, and after dropping our luggage we headed out using our map and assuming we'd be able to use the huge Duomo dome as a beacon. Wrong! Like Siena, the streets are so narrow and the buildings so tall that half a block away, it disappears. We wandered until we finally bumped into a building we could recognize, and that was our key. We came upon the Duomo from its backside and had to circumnavigate it; I was surprised by how grimy and unimpressive it is compared to the Duomo in Siena. The area around the Duomo, we later discovered, is a sort of "sacrifice zone" ceded by the Firenzans during the long summer season to tourists and merchants. Firenze retreats to its vibrant and interesting neighborhoods, in some cases barely three blocks away from the tourist core.

In the core, there are indeed wonders worth visiting. The grimy cathedral makes the golden doors of the Baptistry, the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti, glow in contrast. Michelangelo called them the "gates to heaven." There's more about Ghiberti's doors, and a small selection of art from Firenze, in the Firenze wing of the Sabbatical Art Gallery. Between the Duomo and the Uffizi, there really is a pedestrianized section choked with shops, where we enjoyed wandering and looking in windows.

Ghiberti's Baptistry doors

Ponte Vecchio	At sunset we found ourselves at the Ponte Vecchio, an old bridge that's been ground zero for jewelers since before Medici times. We found it gilded by the lowering sun. Through its central arches, the old city beyond looked like detail in the background of a renaissance painting.
the old bridge's central arches Of course the bridge was mobbed with tourists window shopping -- the jewelry wasn't terribly compelling, but it was terribly expensive, and so, not surprisingly, there weren't many folks in the shops.

Piazza della Signoria

It was gelato time, so we walked through the Uffizi's courtyard -- amazing that such a plain building could have such a collection within! -- to the little plaza in front of Florence's City Hall, where several impressively large statues coexist with mobs of ambling tourists. We bought gelato, sat on a kerb, and watched the passing tourists.

On our way home, we discovered ourselves in the middle of a ceremony involving Firenze's finest flag throwers -- the big guys this time. Their stunts were fabulous, but unfortunately the light was too poor for photography. After their act, an impressive train of dignitaries filed out of the Duomo and off into the gloaming... ...and right behind them came a big, noisy, chaotic mass of marching Italian Communists dressed in red and bearing hammer-and-sickle flags and signs saying "Close! Sabotage! No!" alongside anti-American banners opposing the anticipated war against Afghanistan.

Marching Communists

We found a crummy dinner and went home exhilarated but somewhat shaken. Into the fire indeed! The city never really quieted down during the night, and we were excited that first thing the next morning we'd be trying to beat the mob to the Uffizi. After all, it opens at 8:30 am and NOBODY in Italy gets up before 10... Wrong again! We got there just after 8:00 am and found a line of several hundred hardy and expectant souls. Well, we would endure! An hour later, we had wended our way past the ticket booth to the head of the line. Behind us, a well-dressed Italian businessman and his lady friend were practically peeing themselves with anger that it should take so long to get in. A sign said only 800 people at a time are allowed in the gallery, and that seemed to us like an idea worth waiting for. Finally, after being line-jumped by several tour groups, it was our turn, and we climbed what seemed like seven long flights of steps, and there we were! Wonderful statuary, great painted ceilings, bright rooms -- sorry, they wouldn't allow photographs, and except for the "favorites" the museum is not at all well documented. We had our "go for the jewels" strategy worked out, based on our concern that the authorities might move us through quickly in order to facilitate the 800 rule ...but we should have figured, we're in Italy. Once inside, the limit on entries and the layout of the Uffizzi puts it at the top of my list of Great Museums. Big draws, like the Tribune, the room reserved by the museum's builders, the Medici, for what they considered the most valuable pieces in their extensive collection, are mobbed, and considerable galleries build up from time to time in front of great pieces like Botticelli's Venus on the Half Shell (aka The Birth of Venus) and Primavera, Titian's breakthrough Venus of Urbino, and Michelangelo's innovative Holy Family ... but these groups move on quickly and we found we could spend uninterrupted time with each if we were patient. What a delight, to have time to notice that Titian carefully copied, for the upholstery of the Venus's bed, the same material that Giotto used for the Ognissanti Madonna's cloak!

How lovely, to sit on a bench in front of one of Botticelli's lesser known pieces and really enjoy the storytelling qualities of the work, the mastery of rendering and perspective, the delicate detailing of draperies and architectural details, the unique humanity of each of the faces! Wow! We took time to loop back and look at the undeclared masterpieces a second time. I've put several of my favorites into the Firenze Wing of the Sabbatical Art Gallery for your browsing enjoyment. Yin and Yang of Firenze

detail from Titian's "Venus of Urbino" I couldn't take pictures inside the Uffizi, but they didn't say I couldn't take pictures through the windows, and the big gallery windows offered an extraordinary perspective on the city. Built by the Medici as offices -- that's what Uffizi means -- and with the intention that their extensive art collection would be privately housed on the top floor, this gallery was built by art-loving pirates at the top of their form. Looking east, I had to wonder if Italian architects are aware of the statement they make with their domes and campaniles. Would these represent Mother Church and Father Commerce? Looking west over the Arno, I was delighted to get this perspective on the Vasari Corridor, an example of the most egregious abuse of wealth I have ever seen.

That long narrow tile roof emerging from the Uffizi, running along the river and then across the Ponte Vecchio, tops a hallway built in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari, court architect to the Medicis, to allow them to walk between their Pitti Palace and their offices untroubled by the dirty citizens and mud of the streets below. The corridor was richly decorated with works that didn't make it into the Gallery and in every possible way made to seem like the Medici never left home. Vasari Corridor and Mannelli Tower In a city literally owned by the Medici, there was still successful resistance -- and that may just be the seasoning that saves Firenze from commercial mediocrity. Nevertheless, the corridor stands as an amazing testimonial to the arrogance of the rich, and is pointed to with pride by the great-grandchildren of Firenzans who were demeaned by it. Even today, if your name isn't Medici, you practically have to beg to see the inside of the corridor. (We didn't bother.)

the "Vasari" Corridor It has been noted previously that the Ponte Vecchio was a jewelry center, and one family, the Mannelli, charged with the responsibility of defending the bridge, built a tower to help do so. It's just out of the photograph above, on the west side of the Arno. I am delighted to report that a century later, when Vasari, undoubtedly with the authority of the Medici behind him, demanded that they tear it down to make way for his corridor, the Mannellis told him to take a hike. And so the corridor slims down to a trickle and works its way around the tower narrowly on brackets. That's the ancient Mannelli tower above the corridor in the photo at left.

Guidebooks warn of "Stendhal's Syndrome," an apparently well-known experience of tourists who come to Firenze for some intensive culture vulturing. Typically this complaint manifests as confusion, a sense of disorientation and inadequacy in the face of so much beauty and so many decisions. Forewarned of this danger, and following our strategy first enunciated in London of "going for the jewels" we limited our intake to the cream of the crop, and with the addition of the works already mentioned, made our visit to Firenze into a study of the easily accessible works of Sandro Botticelli, whom we admire for his use of color, draftsmanship, but above all for the allegorical depth and mystery of his painting. I hate to sound like Ronald Reagan, but when you've seen one Madonna and child, one collection of saints gazing stiff-neckedly to heaven, one pieta, you've seen them all. Overdressed Mary always looks pained, and her child always looks like a miniaturized little old man. Great paintings and sculpture, like great poems and indeed all great art, have an added dimension of ambiguity, an invitation to the viewer, the listener, the reader, to bring something to the party in the form of personal appreciation and the memories of all the other great works viewed and enjoyed previously. The stiff, eyes-rolled-back hagiographic panels that fill the Louvre, the Uffizzi, and doubtless all the other "great" museums in Europe (and elsewhere) are little more than pedantic illustrations meant by their makers to tell stories to viewers who couldn't read. Indeed, some of them actually label the halos and spell out the utterances for the medieval tour guides who were using the painting to explain the story to unlettered worshipers. Interested as I am with pedagogy, these illustrations hold passing interest for me, but a few of them go a very long way.

the Boboli garden and Firenze beyond

We figured it was time for a garden, and we went to the Boboli in back of the huge Pitti Palace in Oltrarno -- across the Arno. We had a lovely stroll through the big garden, and then found a little porcelain museum (miraculously, free with entry to the garden!) It's only taken Firenze four centuries to figure it out: Museums make for good business. There are Museums EVERYWHERE, and they all have their hands out.

in the Porcelain Museum

Of course, museums make people hungry for things, and so everywhere there's a museum, there are at least ten shops. Porcelain doesn't make the perfect tourist acquisition, but jewelry! and clothes! and, this being Italy, shoes! The museums are a sophisticated form of chumming for shoppers, the way unethical fishermen sometimes throw bait in the water to get the fish biting. In Firenze we watched a literal buying frenzy, the tourists lading themselves down unmercifully with name-brand shopping bags.

For us, shopping isn't much of a temptation, but what do you say, Rochelle, to another quick museum? So we hustled over and waited in another long line before being admitted to the small and over-priced Galleria dell'Accademia. We were here for a few jewels -- another Botticelli, Michelangelo's powerful "Prisoners" -- but above all we were here to see his amazing David. I'd never been happy with the standard explanation of David -- a cocky post Goliath hero -- and standing in a far corner looking him in the eye, I knew why: this was David before the fight, stones in hand, sling over shoulder, physically prepared but anxious. Firenze's enthusiasm for the statue bears me out -- even with the Medicis, theirs was an upstart city competing with giants like Rome, Venice, and Genoa, and they liked to identify with David.

One of the Prisoners and David

Santa Croce's new facade

After our walk back from Oltrarno and the long, hot line at the Accademia, we needed gelato, so we tracked down a little neighborhood shop reputed to have "the best gelato in the world" -- Bar Vivoli, if you must know. We're not qualified to judge, but it sure was good! We sat happily on a strange cement dias in the square fronting Santa Croce, a beautiful neighborhood church, and watched the delightful tourist-free zone.

"Care for another museum, dear?" "No, thank you. Let's head on to Greece..."

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