1st June 2000 Florence
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2000
1
36
81
Trip End
Aug 09, 2000
Florence,
Italy
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER (For those of us lucky enough to be in the Northern Hemisphere.)
Around 9.00 am, I ducked down to the Grillo's Alimentary for some breadrolls and ham to make rolls to take for dinner at Piazza Michelangelo that evening. I gave them a print of Sydney (we had brought three for special gifts-Eve Hannah paintings), but had to employ the threat of the Australian Mafia to get them to accept. As luck would have it, it was of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, so I was able to indicate where there brother lived (well, the general direction). I insisted that they hang it in the shop as a reminder, and a discussion point for their other customers.
Back home, Carlo passed the door and noticed our empty wine bottle. He immediately took me into his cellar to get us another bottle (a lighter, summer red), and showed me all the liqueurs etc he has under way. He explained that he makes his own alcohol rather than buy it. This is for two reasons. Bought alcohol tends to be "raw" or "harsh". In making it himself, from his own grapes, it is smoother, and he can regulate the alcohol level. As he said, "When it starts out, it is pure alcohol. When it finishes, it is pure water. I make the decision as to weather I stop early or late". We got to know Carlo well enough, even over a brief period of time, to be pretty certain that he stops earlier rather than later. Many liquors are home made, and involve "steeping" whatever, in the alcohol for anything from a month to three months, regularly turning the brewing jugs/bottles. Having picked this up from Rebecca in Assisi, I mentioned that I had been amazed to discover that Sambuca is made by steeping the bark from the Zambuck tree (they were all over the countryside throughout Umbria and Tuscany- grow to 7 metres or so with masses of white flowers in big heads). Now I can only assume he was making some sort of Laurel Liqueur, because he immediately lead me out of the cellar and into a corner of his garden, where he had a Laurel tree. He explained that this was what the Romans used to make their laurel wreaths.
After lunch, and having made up the bread rolls for dinner, we headed in to town and to the Galleria del Academia. Only a shortish queue, on the hottest side of the street, and after 20 minutes we were at the door. Bugger! I had grabbed a L10,000 note out of our stash, not a L100,000, and the admission was L24,000 and they didn't take credit cards. Off to an ATM, back and rejoin the queue, at the end again. As Ches said, if that hadn't happened, we never would have met that "lovely English lass". She was doing a "gap" year at a school in Germany, and having a week in Florence. Trying to cram as much culture into one week as possible. Unfortunately she came to regard me as an "authority on art" as we discussed what and why and how and who, both here at the Acadamy and the following day when we ran into her again at the Uffizi. Me. An authority on Art!
Inside, she approached us again, to discuss the "Prisoners" sculptures by Michelangelo. Four separate sculptures, in each case, only the front half of a body emerging from the marble. They were commissioned by Pope Julius for his tomb. That's the same Pope Julius who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. Talk about a hard taskmaster. Now Julius commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt a number of items for his tomb, and as we discovered in Rome, they never got around to burying him in St Peters. He ended up in San Pietro in Vincole (about a kilometre from St Peters at the Vatican), and the sculptures ended up in various places. The Medici snapped up these four, and the on going debate is as to weather or not they are "unfinished" or if Michelangelo intentionally sculptured them to represent both the struggle of man to free himself, the struggle by man to free his soul from his body and/or the struggle of the artist to draw life out of the marble. Why start on all four, rather than one at a time, if it isn't intentional for them to be regarded as completed? Either way, she enjoyed the speculation.
We had already spent half an hour with "David", and seen the rest of the collection, and now returned to spend another half hour with him. I still regard the Farnese Bull in Napoli, as the most stunning piece of sculpture in Italy. The Pieta and Moses were both wonderful, and David is a stunning achievement, but the Farnese Bull is amazing. It is almost as high as David, but contains four figures and a bull. It is huge. Michelangelo actually restored it, inserting sections that were missing (It had originally been part of the Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome). But, back to David. Put it this way, we spent more time sitting on the benches around the walls, looking at him, and moving to another bench to view from a different angle, than we have done with almost any other work of art on this holiday. The other great piece of sculpture in Napoli is the Farnese Hercules, which really is exceptional. One of the guide books notes that Napoleon always regretted leaving it behind when he removed his booty from Italy in 1797. From what I am coming to understand about Napoleon, I can only surmise that being a fairly poor anatomical specimen himself, he thought that the statue of Hercules represented his own achievements as a colossus.
We have subsequently see both the plaster copy of David in Piazza della Signoria, and the bronze copy in Piazza Michelangelo, but as far as we are concerned, there is only one "Dave", and he's in the Accademia.
Being close to Mercato Centrale, we returned for Ches to buy gloves for the girls and some perfume for herself (Georgio at half the price in Australia). I picked up my trousers, on which the legs had been hemmed, and then we strolled down Via Roma, Via Calimala and Via Por Santa Maria to Ponte Vecchio. Talk about window shoppers paradise. As I said to Ches, thank heavens she could only walk down one side of the street at a time. There was now jewellery that she just had to have, on the Ponte Veccio. If the truth be known, her legs were so tired, she was distracted from looking an too many shops.
We had decided to have our bread rolls up at Piazza Michelangelo, and watch the sun set over Firenze. The previous evening had produced a brilliant golden horizon. As we crossed the intersection on the far side of Ponte Veccio, there was a Pasticeria with a window full of the most amazing "things". We had to go in. Walked out with a L9,000 "nugget" of chocolate, biscuit, almonds and who knows what. Desert. Noticed in a shop window a poster advertising that on the three following Sundays, there is to be the Firenze Calcio. This is the football game played in a fenced in arena, with a round ball that has to be put in to a goal at the far end. Beyond that, there are no rules. They can pass or kick the ball, they can wrestle or punch the opposition, pin them to the ground to keep them out of the game, anything goes. From film I have seen, they basically play till one team is so exhausted that they can no longer keep up the physical stuff, and then the goals come. We may, or may not be able to make it back to see a game. Considering Ches thinks being away from Sydney for an entire Rugby season may break a habit of a lifetime, probably not.
This also raises another interesting observation. The poster advertising "Firenze Calcio", was in a shop window. We have noticed that there are no billboards or poster advertising in Italy. There are the frustrating signposts at intersections in the countryside, with a hundred signs on three posts, which we have already mentioned. They aren't even an eyesore, just impossible to read when approaching at even 50 km/h. No billboards (with the exception of a huge one advertising the Jazz Festival in Spoleto-which I photographed). No commercial product advertising on the streets at all. Special Event posters seem to have to be registered. They almost always are only on display in shop windows, or on community notice boards near or in the piazza. Non are any bigger than maybe a metre by a metre, and all have an official stamp somewhere on it. It seems that every poster has to be registered with the local government office (the Commune). That is, every individual poster. The Commune Office stamps each one, authorising where it is going to be displayed-shop window, notice board or ???, there is no "or", that's it.
The Spoleto Jazz Festival Poster has been the only exception. It is 5 metres long and 2 metres high. It pictures twenty kindergarten age children in a queue, waiting to step up on a box to reach the slot in an old fashioned letterbox, each with a letter in their hand. Below is the e-mail and website addressees. Cute.
Back to our journey. We set off along back streets, on the far side of the Arno, trying to locate the road that leads off up to Piazza Michelangelo. Quite a maze, which our map didn't help to sort out. Suddenly I no longer appreciated having regained my sense of smell. Occasionally in the streets around the Mercato Central, we had been overwhelmed by stench. We were beginning to suspect the drains. We were now convince. There had now been three days of very hot, high twenties whether. Also high humidity. Weather it be rubbish in drains or the industrial bins in the side streets, that everyone has to use, even households, it can really turn the stomach. We were gasping for air on the lower slopes of the hill. Finally found the street and set off up hill. The options are: follow the road which winds like a serpent up the hill, but is easier on the lungs and legs (15-20 minutes), or take the staircase, straight up for 150 metres and not easy on lungs or legs (could be 5 minutes or forever). We elected the latter. That's right, the steps. At the top we consumed what was left in both our bottles of water, and had a long sit down.
It seemed that every other tourist, particularly the 20 somethings from all over the world had also decided this was the thing to do. In the course of the next hour and a half, hundreds of them took up positions on the broad staircase that leads down from the Piazza to the viewing deck on the western side. We had arrived early enough to get a bench seat (renaissance infact-with mosaic patterns), beside a garden, on the viewing deck, with all of Firenze layed out before us. We ate our dinner and watched as the sun sank lower. The lower it got, the more red it turned. In the end, it was a fireball. So bright, its reflections on the Arno appeared as streaks of flame from under each of the four bridges. Made for a fabulous photograph. Unfortunately, there was too much smog on the horizon above the mountains, and so never produced quite the effect of the previous night.
We began the two kilometre walk back to the Duomo. Turned out to be three k's when I made the mistake of letting Ches take over the navigating again. We crossed the Arno via the Ponte alle Grazie, and stopping to look down, discovered that there are sheets of either cement or rock around the base of the pylons. They appeared to be only a matter of a half metre below water level, and all was surrounded by seaweed. Suddenly there was movement and the flash of a white underbelly. Fish that were up to 70 cm long. We still haven't remembered to ask anyone what they were, but there were dozens of them. In our wanderings, at around 9.00 pm, we suddenly found ourselves passing Trattoria Pallottino (lunch remember?). It was really jumping, and there were again queues of people waiting for a table. Also stumbled upon Mercato Nuovo the old Straw Market, where appropriately enough Ches was to return and buy a straw hat. It is also the home of "Porcellino" the 1612 bronze boar, on which the boar our front of the old Sydney Hospital is supposedly modelled. On we went. Ches knew a short cut. Ches remembered that she had seen a 14B bus go down this street. Ches added a kilometre to the walk. We gave up, and walked
straight to the Stazione Centrale bus stop. Home around 10.00 pm
