Europe June 2011 -- Florence: Churches

At least a week could be spent exploring churches in Florence.  I suppose everyone has their favorite.  Santa Croce is mine.  In fact it's in my top 5 for all of Europe.

There is something intimate and atmospheric about this sacred place.  It captivated me when I was in Florence in 1977 and it has never let me go.  I don't think it was a coincidence that the apartment we rented was across the street from it.  We walked past it daily while we were in Florence.

It was on Ramona's must-see list and we all visited it together.  I got these pictures at around sunset on a different day.  The taped off area you see in front was for a special event to be held in the piazza a few days after we left.

Dante's presence is both outside and inside.

The tombs and memorials for famous people certainly are impressive.  This is Galileo's.  Because of his scientific "heresy," when he died in 1642 he was buried in a relatively obscure part of the church.  His body was moved to this tomb in 1737.  

Michelangelo's tomb is a popular photo op.  The story goes that he chose this location in Santa Croce himself so that when the front doors of the basilica are opened, he can see the Duomo.

Of course, Dante is memorialized here, although the tomb is empty.  He is actually buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore.

And what's a great church without a great historian, philosopher, writer and a main founder of modern political science buried there?  This is the tomb of Machiavelli.

There are many other famous people buried here, but it's not really these tombs that get me.

The church architecture is of the simple, even austere type I like.  It is the largest Franciscan church in the world.  It replaced an older building and construction was started in 1294.  It was consecrated in 1442.

I love the space, but that's only part of  Santa Croce's hold on me.

I'm a big fan of Cimabue and Giotto and the frescoes are astonishing.  I just wasn't able to get any good pictures.  You can see Cimabue's cross here with some of Giotto's frescoes.

This is Giotto's Resurrection of Drusiana.

As much as I love Giotto, it's not just his frescoes that keep bringing me back.

The courtyard area and the grill work are impressive, but it's not those either.

It's the tombs like this that I always want to see again and again.  Now they are roped off, but when I first saw them, they weren't.  You can see how worn the reliefs are from hundreds of years of people walking over them.  There are over 250 tombs in the floor.  Not all of them are as fancy as these, but they all are part of what makes Santa Croce unique. 

The Duomo is the best known church in Florence.  It is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.  It was begun in 1296 in Gothic style and finished in 1436 with the Brunelleschi dome.  The links have much more information on the church with more pictures.

We did not go inside.  That was partly because we got there after closing, and that was somewhat intentional to avoid the crowds.   In fact, Trout just sat on a bench and watched the world go by while I walked around and took pictures. 

As is so often the case, work was being done on the outside, mostly cleaning of this marble skin that was put there in the 19th century.  This part had not been cleaned yet.

Giotto's bell tower isn't leaning, I was.  This is on the side where Trout was sitting.

Here you can see some of the scaffolding for the work being done, along with an angle on the dome.

This is pretty impressive for a side entrance.

This is the main facade.

And these are the front doors.

This is the scene above the main doors.

And here is Mary and the baby Jesus in one of the niches.

This is another view of the bell tower.

These are the famous Ghiberti doors on the Baptistry, or at least reproductions of them.  The original ones are in the museum for the Duomo.  They were replaced to preserve them.  I got there just as they were closing and rolling the security gate up.

Even after closing, the Duomo is a popular site.

I liked going around this back side.    You can see the buttresses for the dome well here.  More scaffolding, eh?

I loved this view -- including the clock.

So I worked my way back around to Trout.

The Piazza del Duomo is busy on all sides.

Trout didn't read his book or gawk at Italian girls the whole time he waited for me.  He did read about this guy as best he could.  This is a sculpture of Brunelleschi consulting his drawings as he looks at his dome.

That was the extent of our church going in Florence.  There are lots of advantages to visiting this city:  there is so much to see, it is within decent walking distance of the major areas to stay in and it is almost all flat.



Europe June 2011 -- Fun in Tuscany with Ramona & Aidan: Part 2. San Gimignano, Pisa & Florence

This is a leftover picture from Siena, but it could be a scene from almost anywhere -- a person who is a street performer, in this case a living statue, getting dressed for his gig.  It's common to see them do this and fun to watch them get into costume and makeup.

After that lovely lunch at the agriturismo, we rode on over to San Gimignano.  By this time, I was really getting weary.  My knees hurt and I was just dragging.  I watched as the bus drove by this entrance to the town hoping they would let us off here.  But noooooo, we went to the lowest parking lot and had to walk back uphill to get to the entrance.

Walking up a slope isn't nearly as bad for me as going up and down stairs, but there were some of those, too.   Ramona, Aidan and Trout handled the hike just fine, but I was very slow.  I had on my good hiking Salomons with some wicking socks I got at REI.  At one point I pulled up my pants and my ankles were exceedingly swollen and the tops of the socks were cutting into my legs so much that it looked like they were those balloon animals twisted in the middle.  When I moved the top of the sock down to my ankle, I was much more comfortable.  I made sure to get a few good whines out of the situation, though.

San Gimignano is a very touristy town, but it's still interesting to see.  I linked to a Wikipedia article above, but I found no really good articles on the town.  The major interest is the towers.  It was a common thing during the middle ages for the wealthy to build towers to show off their wealth, the bigger the better.  At one time San Gimignano had 70+ of them.  Now there are only about 14.  I was so pooped, I shot no pictures of them, but you can see lots of good pictures here.

We walked uphill through lots of shops ready to take our money, until we got to the Piazza della Cisterna.

We had to have some world champion gelato, naturally.

Like so many others, we sat on the steps of the "well" to gawk and enjoy the gelato.  You can also see a wedding party having pictures made here.

It turns out that this is no ordinary well.  The cistern from which the piazza gets its name is under it.  It was designed about 800 years ago to be a rainwater collection device.  The runoff goes into the cistern and the well is the way the people got to the water.  And we think we're so clever...

This is a hotel right on the piazza.  We didn't go inside but I suspect the rooms are quite nice and quite pricey.

These kinds of views are what make Tuscany so attractive to so many people.  I have to admit that in spite of this area being cultivated and populated for millenia, it is still beautiful.  I took these pictures on the way back (down, thank goodness) to the bus.

Our longest bus ride of the day was to Pisa from San Gimignano.  This is the famous Piazza dei Miracoli with the Duomo, Baptistry and Bell (Leaning) Tower.  Even though it was a Saturday in June, it wasn't as crowded as I expected.


There's something about this setting with only the green grass and the buildings that I find particularly appealing.

Trout found the steps to a chapel on the tower side appealing.  Many of the larger churches keep one chapel open for people to go in and light candles and pray without having to pay an entrance fee.  I went in this chapel and did that.  It was the 1st chapel I had been to where the candles are now battery operated.  I could look at the rest of the cathedral, but I couldn't go into it to see anything close up.  It was well-guarded to prevent that.

Ramona and Aidan went around to explore on their own.  I walked around the Duomo.

I liked this drain design.  You many remember a very similar one I shot at the Forum when we were in Rome in 2009.

Here wheelchair access becomes a bicycle ramp for this child and his grandmother.

This is the Baptistry.

This is the entrance side to the Duomo.

Our long day was complete with the visit to Pisa.  We got on the bus and headed back to Florence.  We took a taxi back to our apartment and once again ate at Baldovino.

The next day was Sunday.  In spite of my attempts to schedule our must-sees so as not to conflict with things Ramona had already seen, I couldn't get tickets to the Accademia to see Michelangelo's David except on this Sunday.


That worked out okay because she wanted to take Aidan to a Micky D's and to ride on the carousel at the Piazza della Repubblica.  You can see the carousel in the aerial pictures shown in the Wikipedia link.


I linked to some photos of the David above.  I didn't take any pictures inside the galleries. 

After our time at the Accademia, we walked to the piazza and watched Aidan from a sidewalk cafe while we had a little snack.  She was definitely having a good time.

From there we went on to the Palazzo Vecchio.  Trout and I watched Aidan while Ramona went inside.  We hung out in the open sculpture court called the Loggia dei Lanzi and played games with Aidan on the steps while Ramona enjoyed the Palazzo.

These buildings and scuptures are all off the Piazza della Signoria, a significant and major square in Florence.  We went through it many times on the way to other places as well as just for its own sake.

It was getting close to dinner time, so that meant going to the Golden View Open Bar.  Ramona recommended it and we had already eaten there once on our own.  She didn't have to twist our arms to get us to go.  She noticed the place because it was one of the few places that is open all day without shutting down in the afternoon.  Then there was the fun decor, the great location and the  food. 

It was super having Ramona and Aidan come up and join us for that weekend in Florence.  We had lots of fun in spite of my whining in San Gimignano.  She has what I think is the perfect attitude about traveling and the costs involved.  She decides how much she wants to spend and when the money starts to run out, it's time to go home.  If it doesn't run out, more's the better.  The travel gurus all say to make that decision in Euros (these days) and forget about comparing them to dollars all the time. 

I'm really pleased that she and Jason understand the value of experiences and have taken good advantage of their time in Europe.  They have seen and done things I'm sure they will never forget, and I think Aidan will remember the feeling of living in Italy and their travels, even if she doesn't remember the details.  I'm sure there are many military families that hardly venture away from the immediate area where they live and hate every minute of being there.  I certainly saw them in Germany in the 80s, even though the exhange rate (marks back then) was so favorable to the American dollar.

Of course, we all know that regardless of how much or how little money we have, we all spend it on the things we enjoy or think are important, right?  That's why I'm sceptical when people say that they can't "afford" something.  I think that really means that whatever they can't afford really isn't as much of a priority for them as what they can.