{"id":131,"date":"2009-04-28T06:51:24","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T10:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=131"},"modified":"2009-04-28T06:51:24","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T10:51:24","slug":"a-day-in-firenze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/a-day-in-firenze\/","title":{"rendered":"A day in Firenze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week here in Italy was Settimana della Cultura<\/strong> (Culture Week). Organized by the Italian Ministry of Arts, Settimana della Cultura<\/strong> offers free entry to all the national museums, so\u00a0we decided to make the most of it and go to Firenze <\/strong>(Florence)\u00a0for the first time in\u00a0many years. On the Monday afternoon we went down to Lucca to visit my parents, and use their house as a base for our \u2018expedition\u2019. The following morning\u00a0we caught the Lazzi<\/strong> bus from Piazzale Verdi<\/strong> in Lucca. Known as the direttissima per Firenze <\/strong>(the \u2018very direct for Florence\u2019!),\u00a0the bus runs\u00a0from Lucca to Firenze along the motorway without any stops, it\u2019s comfortable and\u00a0fast, and in just over an hour we had arrived in Piazza Adua, <\/strong>Firenze, right\u00a0next to the main railway station which is called\u00a0Santa Maria Novella<\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Full of enthusiasm, we strolled down past the Chiesa di San Lorenzo<\/strong> and the Cappelle Medicee<\/strong> towards the Galleria dell\u2019Accademia<\/strong>: I was in fact planning on visiting the Galleria because I love Michelangelo\u2019s \u201cunfinished\u201d statues of the four prigioni<\/strong> (prisoners) and the Pieta\u2019 di Palestrina<\/strong>, but I had completely forgotten that the Galleria is of course also famous for Michelangelo\u2019s David<\/strong>. As we got near the Museum we saw a coda<\/strong> (cue, literally \u2018tail\u2019) of people, probably 200 meters long, all waiting with\u00a0dogged patience to get into the Galleria dell\u2019Accademia! Mamma mia, stavo per piangere<\/strong>! (I was ready to cry).\u00a0Disappointed, but resigned to the situation\u00a0I decided to go to the nearby Museo Archeologico<\/strong> where I used to work many years ago. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is an excellent museum, but is not very popular with tourists due to the comparative lack of \u2018famous\u2019 works of art, and apart from a couple of school parties it was very quiet. Upon arriving, I sought out my former manager, now director of the Egyptian section, and caught up with all the latest gossip about\u00a0my\u00a0ex Egyptology colleagues.\u00a0We then went on to have a fascinating tour of the\u00a0Museum. Near the\u00a0entrance there was a very interesting exhibition about counterfeit money,\u00a0which began\u00a0with counterfeit Roman coins, and included fake Bank of England banknotes produced by the Third Reich in Sachhausen concentration camp during WW2 in order to try and flood the British and U.S. economies with\u00a0counterfeit money, fake\u00a0post WW2 Italian Lire notes,\u00a0\u00a0and contemporary forged credit cards.\u00a0The exhibition\u00a0ended with\u00a0a large\u00a0display of machinery which had been used in a\u00a0counterfeit money factory\u00a0discovered a year ago near Rome which produced fake US Dollars. It was all very fascinating\u00a0and you\u00a0couldn\u2019t help but admire the ingenuity of the forgers.<\/span><\/p>\n

At lunchtime,\u00a0rimbambiti<\/strong> (stupified) after looking at innumerable Etruscan bronzes and Egyptian steles, we went out into Piazza Santissima Annunziata<\/strong> to eat our panini<\/strong>. The piazza was packed with parties of school\u00a0children whose\u00a0main occupation seemed to be\u00a0feeding the pigeons with their panini. Luckily there is plenty of space for everybody to find a\u00a0seat on the steps that\u00a0lead up to the beautiful porticoes of the Spedale degli Innocenti<\/strong> by Brunelleschi<\/strong>.\u00a0Feeling somewhat refreshed we continued our expedition\u00a0with a\u00a0walk down towards Santa Maria in Fiore<\/strong>, with its magnificent Campanile di Giotto<\/strong> (Giotto\u2019s bell tower),\u00a0finally arriving at\u00a0il Bargello<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Il Bargello<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/strong>also known as the\u00a0Palazzo del Podesta\u2019<\/strong>,\u00a0houses the national museum of Tuscan Sculptures from the 14th to the 17th century. Here you can find many famous sculptures by Michelangelo, Giambologna, Benvenuto Cellini and Donatello, as well as a collection of exquisite ivory carvings, the intricate work of goldsmiths, beautiful\u00a0tapestries, and armor. Displayed on a wall behind Donatello\u2019s David (a delicate bronze sculpture depicting a young adolescent, so different from Michelangelo\u2019s\u00a0powerful marble sculpture of the same name),\u00a0there are two very interesting bronze plaques, one by Lorenzo Ghiberti and the other by Filippo Brunelleschi. They were made in 1401\u00a0for a competition which was held in Firenze to choose the artist who would decorate the second door of the Baptistery (the first door had been decorated by Andrea Pisano in 1336). The artists entering the competition had to present a work based on the biblical story of the Sacrificio di Isacco<\/strong> (Isaac\u2019s sacrifice) and\u00a0many famous artists, including Jacopo\u00a0Della Quercia,\u00a0presented their interpretations of this theme in order to try and win this\u00a0prestigious contract. In the end the judges awarded equal first place to both\u00a0Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, but it seems that Brunelleschi artistic pride prevented him from\u00a0sharing the job,\u00a0and so the work of embellishing the huge doors of the Baptistery\u00a0was carried out by Ghiberti.\u00a0Even if it is full of wonders I have to say that what\u00a0I like best about this museum is the building itself: il Bargello<\/em> was built between 1255 and 1346; it has a beautiful inner courtyard\u00a0surrounded by\u00a0porticoes with a monumental staircase\u00a0which takes you up to the first floor where the museum is located. We walked around with\u00a0our mouths open looking at the imposing walls, the decorative ceilings, and the fantastic windows\u00a0composed of hundreds\u00a0of round glass \u2018panes\u2019 which looked rather like the bottoms of old wine bottles. This is probably my favorite building in the whole of Firenze: if only it could be mine!<\/span><\/p>\n

After we left the Bargello we wandered through some of the narrow Medieval streets down near the river Arno, took one look at the Ponte Vecchio<\/strong> (Old Bridge)\u00a0which seemed about to collapse under the heaving mass of tourists,\u00a0and then back up towards Piazza della Signoria<\/strong>, where we sat down to listen to a street musician whilst watching a \u2018living sculpture\u2019. Finally we escaped the mad hordes\u00a0and strolled along some of the smaller interesting\u00a0backstreets\u00a0to\u00a0find our way\u00a0back to the bus station.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

E\u2019 stata una bella giornata.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week here in Italy was Settimana della Cultura (Culture Week). Organized by the Italian Ministry of Arts, Settimana della Cultura offers free entry to all the national museums, so\u00a0we decided to make the most of it and go to Firenze (Florence)\u00a0for the first time in\u00a0many years. On the Monday afternoon we went down to…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[693,695,797,799],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","tag-firenze","tag-florence","tag-museo-archeologico-di-firenze","tag-museo-del-bargello"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}