An hour or so before sunset and already the city had began to glow faintly orange, its roofs, towers and domes gashing great shadows across the medieval scaled streets. The swarms of acrobatic, screechy swifts had begun their evening decent to dive bomb the piazzas, bridges and alleyways. I was standing at the top of the torre d'Arnolfo, the sinister, battlement encrusted, 13 century tower, visible for miles around, soaring above the rusticated Palazzo Vecchio like a scorpion's tail. Suddenly one of my fellow tower climbers belted out the first few bars of "O mio babbino caro", that Puccini aria which has become so emblematic of the city of Florence.
Torre d'ArnolfoFor a brief moment it was as though time in the Piazza della Signoria below froze as all movement ceased and everyone stood and listened, transfixed. Sadly the tower singer was overtaken by sudden shyness, her spell was broken and we found ourselves back in real time, blinking at the evening Florentine light, hairs on the backs of our collective necks settling down again.
This was on the second night of my third visit to the great but tiny city and my first in the summer. I was there to see the fabulous Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, which ended just a few days after my trip, hence my taking a chance on the stunning heat and the legendary hoards of American tourists who flood the place in high season. As it turned out neither of these factors were as bad as I feared. Yes it was hot, a pretty steady 35 degrees, but in a well shaded townscape it wasn't too bad, and as I had previously seen the 4 great queue points, the Accadamia, the Uffizi, the campanile de Giotto and the top of the iconic dome of the cathedral I didn't have to test my patience with the huge, mostly American and Chinese lines snaking away from them. There was even a queue just to get into the Cathedral for a free peek. The main drawback with the steamy weather was the ol' place could be quite suddenly and seriously stinky.
campanile de GiottoVasari's fresco inside the domeSadly in 2014 many of the visitors who will only be able to see Firenze on this one time in their lives will be somewhat disappointed. The 11 century Baptistery is covered in scaffolding which badly obscures the famous doors by Ghiberti. Brunelleschi's 15 century Ospedale degli Innocenti is covered in scaffolding and closed. The opera of the Duomo is covered in scaffolding and closed. The Cellini statue on the Ponte Vecchio is covered by the most intrusive scaffolding possible, marring all views of this iconic landmark from the west. Half the interior of the Medici tombs under the dome of San Lorenzo are covered in scaffolding (as is the spire of the basilica). On the day I visited, the top floor of the Bargello was shut too, though I suspect I was just unlucky that particular morning. Most disfiguring of all however are the clutch of cranes around the Uffizi ruining the famous views of Santa Marie del Fiore from the Piazza Michelangelo and Hannibal Lector's favourite vista, from the Belvedere.
The baptistery before the big cover upView from the Uffizi While of course a tourist and car battered city of such great age needs a bit of TLC now and then, I couldn't help but notice that the most prominent crane in the courtyard of the Uffizi had been there on my last visit in 2010 and had looked old and rusty even then. It may very well still be there in 2020, in Italy these things happen.
Santa CroceBut enough moaning, here's some pics from December 2010 and July this year. I just wish I was back sitting outside Dondino's in Piazza Santa Croce, knocking back a few beers as the sun goes down turning the white marble of the basilica a bright red then pink. And odd to think that if the ancestors of the screechy, show offy swifts who fly ecstatically around the Piazza at dusk had been interested for just a second in the lumbering people below, those little birds could have glimpsed Michelangelo, Ghiberti, Galileo (who are all buried in Santa Croce along with Machiavelli and Scarlatti, among others), Botticelli, Uccello, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Bronzino, Brunelleschi, Pontormo, Boccaccio, Masaccio, Della Robbia, Giotto or Dante, whose statue stands outside the church and memorial within. But they would probably have been having too good a time to notice those mere immortals anyway.
Ponte VecchioBorgo della StellaBargelloPalazzo PittiBargello. The Donatellos and the Della Robbias live herePalazzo Pitti, with Titian's La Bella
Blub, Piazza Santa FeliciaMichelangelo's Medici tomb domeBargelloCellini's shadowVia GhibellinaDetail of Bronzino's Christ Decent into Limbo, in Santa CroceTomb of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici with Dusk and DawnTomb of GalileoGiardini BardiniPazzi chapel by Brunelleschi. The opera scene in Hannibal was filmed here Piazza della RepubblicaVia RicasoliPalazzo VecchioMedieval tower in the Borgo degli AlbiziPonte Santa TrinitaGiardini BoboliGiardini BardiniThese little stick men signed .K were all over the placeMichelangelo's pissed up Bacchus in the Bargello Torre del GalloThe Arno. Only the Ponte Vecchio survived the war. The Nazis destroyed all the rest as they retreated.