Day 12 - Journey to Florence

Day 12 began early with an hour long bus ride to Florence. I sat with Fr. Paris on the bus and we talked sites and places to see while I'm here and there in Italy. 

For those of you who don't know, the course usually stays in Florence and skips Siena altogether. The issue this year was that Florence was having a leather convention during the week that we had to evacuate the Villa. When Prof. Coolman went to book hotel rooms for us, he found that he couldn't secure rooms because they were filled up with leather merchants and people buying leather. Our backup plan was then to go to Siena and stay there; Siena was close enough for us to jump on a bus and see everything in Florence that we needed to without much effort.

Upon arrival, the group was given a choice between seeing the Medici Chapel or the monastery at St. Marks. I chose the Medici Chapel without question as I'm quite familiar with the family of the Medici. Fr. Paris described the place as something made by a group of people who wanted to be immortalized in the only way they knew how - vast wealth. He cited the poem, Ozymandias: 

"I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

(For anyone paying close attention, "Ozymandias" was also used as the title of the episode of Breaking Bad where Walter starts to lose everything and ends up face down sobbing in the desert sands)

For those of you who are not aware, the Medici family ran banks in Italy. They loaned money and held money, charging incredible interest. They were the people that you went to if you were king and wanted to finance a war. The final downfall of these financial giants came when they eventually backed the wrong guy - he lost and couldn't pay back the loan or the interest, leaving the Medici family broke. Like the pedestal that held the colossal statue of Ozymandias, all that remains of the great family today is the monuments they left behind.

Walking into this place was a breathtaking experience. The tombs were incredibly massive. I tried to get pictures with people in them just to give you a sense of their enormity. The Medicis wanted to tower over everyone else even in death.

Unfortunately parts of the chapel were under construction (and apparently have been for some time) so we were only able to see parts of it. What's amazing is that the major building is only the one large room with six or so tombs.

Fr. Paris explaining aspects of the ceiling frescoes

Every surface was covered in marble of different colors, which Fr. Paris told us were taken from different places around the world and brought to Florence specifically to adorn the Medici Chapel.

Off to the side of the chapel was a smaller chapel in which were held some other less important Medici family members. The interesting thing is, though, that their tombs are adorned with statues made by Michelangelo. Imagine having the money to pay one of the world's most renowned sculptors to create statues for not one, not two, but three of your family members! It's kind of insane.

Following our tour of the Medici Chapel, we met up with the rest of the group outside of the Duomo.

Unfortunately, due to the number of things on my list to do in Florence, I missed actually going inside of the cathedral and the tower (a work of Bernini's, whom you all know I love). As soon as we got to the front of the cathedral, we sped off to tour the Uffizi Gallery.

Outside the gallery, we found an interesting car show going on. We were not entirely sure why, but it may have something to do with the leather convention happening while we were there.

The Uffizi Gallery is a museum of art that was set up in the old palace of the Medicis. When the money family grew tired of the building, they built a new palace down the street and turned the old one into an office building. They then constructed a covered passageway over the Ponte Vecchio that they could use to travel between the new palace and the offices without getting assassinated in the streets. When the family lost its money, Florence turned both palaces into art galleries. The office was used to house the more important collections, becoming the Uffizi Gallery.

The Ponte Vecchio with the covered passageway on top of it

The Uffizi, a U-shaped building, as seen from the top floor looking down into the plaza within

Most of the art inside was incredible, and many of the pieces are priceless masterpieces well known to the world. I took pictures of many pieces of art, but only included the most important ones here.

Botticelli's Birth of Venus

Botticelli's Primavera

Da Vinci's Annunciation

Da Vinci's Baptism of Christ

Hallway of the Uffizi

Michelangelo's Doni Tondo

Caravaggio's Medusa

The Uffizi is also known for its sculptures of various statues of Florentine artists, authors, and philosophers. These statues adorn the inside walls of the plaza. I took pictures of my personal favorites. Unfortunately I could not get a picture of the sculpture of Michelangelo due to construction, but the rest will suffice.

After our Uffizi tour - a very informative one given by Fr. Paris - we stopped by a sandwich shop that was apparently so popular that they bought the storefront across from them and opened an identical sandwich shop to pick up the slack. The wait in line was totally worth it. All of the sandwiches were made to order right in front of you and the price was right.

After lunch, I led a few of us to the Basilica of Santa Croce. This church is not known for anything in particular other than the fact that it is the largest Franciscan church in the world, and that it holds various tombs of philosophers, artists, and other great minds. For this reason, it is known alternatively as the Temple of the Italian Glories.

Outside the church stands a larger-than-life statue of Dante. If you weren't aware, I absolutely love Dante, so seeing him everywhere in Florence was neat. What's sad is that, in his time, he was exiled from Florence and never let back in to his home city. Even after his death, his body was not let into the city to be buried. Only recently has Florence admitted its shortcomings and asked to have Dante returned. Ravenna, where Dante lived out the end of his life, refuses to return the body. In my opinion, I think he should stay in Ravenna - it would kind of be sad to think that 700 years after dying he would be finally returned to Florence as a pile of bones.

Me and Dante

Numerous tombs are set into the floor of the church; this image is just to show you the number of bodies in one section

Tomb of Niccolo Machiavelli 

Tomb of Dante Aligheri, awaiting the possible return of his body from Ravenna

Tomb of Michelangelo Buonarroti

Tomb of Galileo Galilei (new)

Tomb of Galileo Galilei (old)

Cenotaph of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the radio

Cloister beside the church

Following our church visit, we went to the area surrounding the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Here, the leather venders set up shop along the streets with big tents filled with products. Everything here was for sale, and everything could be bartered down in price. I was able to get myself a new wallet and a nice satchel without burning much of a hole in my old wallet. Compared to fixed prices at any American store, I definitely did not like shopping here.

The street leather venders in Florence

Our last stop of the day was to the Gallery of the Academy. We were told in advance by Prof. Coolman and Fr. Paris that, in all, there wasn't that much of note inside except for one piece in particular - the David. Many other pieces of art were held in the gallery but nobody paid any heed to them. We rounded the corner after getting our tickets checked and there he was. The hallway leading up to the sculpture was lined with other pieces done by Michelangelo, but they were all in various states of progress. When talking with some of the group, I came to the conclusion that they were, in a sense, the equivalent for Michelangelo of our scratch paper when we draw today - if we don't like where something we're drawing is going, we simply toss away the paper and start over. At first I figured that the various sculptures were simply things that Michelangelo was in the middle of working on before he passed away and simply never got around to finishing them. I then realized that he simply stopped because he didn't like the way things were looking. It was very cool to see, though, how a pile of rock can slowly be transformed into a beautiful masterpiece.

Hallway leading to David

The David is huge. Absolutely enormous. Words cannot describe how big this statue is. Yes, you're told in advance that he's larger than life, but you don't really know unless you're standing in front of it. It's humungous.

Something else that's pretty awesome, which people don't really think about, is the fact that, in person, you can walk around the David. Everyone always sees pictures of the sculpture from the front - it's a whole different thing when you can start from the front and walk 360˚ around the entire thing. From every angle, this is truly a masterpiece.

The Medici family apparently situated David so that his gaze looked sternly towards Rome

After spending a decent amount of time in the Gallery, we took a stroll to a restaurant for a group dinner with everybody. Following dinner, we hopped on the final bus of the night to return to Siena.

Tomorrow, we will spend some time in Siena and return to Rome for about 5:00pm.

Thus ends the 12th day.