florence, 2007

Florence is sometimes referred to as the Italian city with an English accent. Which is an honest appraisal, because it's easily one of the most popular places for English-speaking tourists to visit in Italy, and the surrounding region of Tuscany is chock full of British second homes. I visited in 2000 as part of a tour organized by my former company. As an employee I was allowed to go for free - a nice perk, I think. Andrea had never been, so when our friends Dan and Kym asked to rendezvous with us in Italy, it seemed the most sensible place to meet.

But the best airfare deal we could find was to Bologna, so we went there first. We only had a morning to explore Bologna, but it was well worth it.

One of the city's old gates. Bologna reminded me of Brussels in that it is surrounded by a wide ring road that used to be the medieval defensive wall. In Bologna many of the gates along the old wall's path are intact.

I'd call this a colonnade, but in Bologna these shaded stretches of columned footpaths are called "porticos." The city is famous for them, and most buildings that line the major streets have them, including this one on Via Indipendenza. They go a long way toward preventing sunburn.

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Fuzzy things on sale amid the porticos. I don't know what they are but they look nice in a photo.

The buildings throughout Bologna are painted the most wonderful deep shades of red, orange and yellow. The colors are well suited for the constant sun.

One of the major churches, San Pietro, is smaller than the duomo (cathedral) but wonderful inside.

A good example of baroque architecture.

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Piazza Re Enzo, Bologna.

Down this alley you can see a tower rising on the right. Bologna used to be full of these towers - by some counts there were once as many as 180 of them. No one is entirely sure why so many towers were considered useful, but most were built between the 12th and 13th centuries and at the very least provide nice views.

The most famous towers are the so-called Two Towers. The one on the left is Torre Garisenda and the more prominent one is the Torre Asinelli. Torre Asinelli is over 97 meters tall.

The Two Towers in the sun.

The statue in the middle is Saint Petronius, who was a fifth century bishop in Bologna.

While the Torre Asinelli is very tall, the Torre Garisenda has impressive qualities of its own. Take a closer look (it's the tower on the left). Notice anything?

Take another look.

Yes, it's leaning. Severely. It's been leaning for a long time, because Dante referred to it in his writings. This tower used to be much higher, but its height was decreased to avoid a collapse.

This is a good view of it from midway up Torre Asinelli, which I climbed. Do click the image and zoom in: it's really surprising. That horizontal bar in the foreground is level.

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Inside Torre Asinelli. The tower is divided into sections with spiral steps along the outer walls in each level.

Holes in the floors offer vertiginous views.

Looking down at Torre Garisenda from the top of Torre Asinelli.

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This is the duomo on the Piazza Maggiore. The hills in the distance are beautiful.

A bit of a wider view. The road at the center is the main thoroughfare in the city, and has been since Etruscan times (the city is pre-Roman).

(Incidentally, this is my first use of the Hugin panoramic photo stitcher. It took me a little while to get used to it, but it's rather nice. It asks you to plot points held in common on multiple images and then takes care of the rest. Pretty handy.)

Here are a couple more of the surviving towers.

Via Castiglione, near the Two Towers.

More wonderfully colored buildings.

Entering Piazza Maggiore, with its distinctive clock tower.

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We found this statue of Neptune rather interesting ...

... albeit largely because of the primary sources of the water.

Under the shadow of the leaning tower we had some of this stuff. I think I had a scoop of banana and a scoop of coconut. The Italians do gelato extremely well.

So that was it for our morning in Bologna, and a couple cabs and a train ride later we met Dan and Kym in Florence.

Our hotel was located just outside the massive city gate leading into an area called Oltrarno.

This is along the River Arno. Not a shabby looking city.

One of the city's famous bridges is Ponte Santa Trinità, which was partially destroyed in World War II but then rebuilt.

It has statues at either end, which had to be fished out of the river for the reconstruction. I assume this is Bacchus.

I couldn't stop taking photos of the sunset over some of the more western bridges. The sky was really beautiful.

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Wasn't I supposed to be taking photos of a city or something?

Looking east, the most famous bridge in Florence is Ponte Vecchio.

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There are a lot of shops lining Ponte Vecchio. And that series of identical windows at the top of the bridge's buildings is a private walkway that stretches between the Palazzo Pitti about a quarter mile south of the city and the Palazzo Vecchio to the north. It was built by the very powerful Medici family, who ruled the area for many years, and wanted their own means of crossing the river and visiting both palaces without having to walk at street level. Nice life.

They even built the walkway around one of the bridge's medieval towers, since the Renaissance-era owner of the tower refused to sell out to the Medicis.

This church had little trouble selling out. The Medici walkway obscures its Romanesque facade.

On the north side of the river is the Palazzo Veccio in a large square called the Piazza della Signora. The piazza is filled with statues, including this Roman-era lion.

Michelangelo's David was first placed here when he finished it in 1504. It is now in the Accademia Gallery in the north of the city center, and this replica stands where it was originally displayed. In 1504 Florence was a republic, in danger of siege by rival Italian kingdoms, so David came to be a symbol of the city's defiance of tyranny. (Note: I didn't take any photos of the actual sculpture in the Academy, but seeing the real David is probably the single most worthwhile thing to do in a city full of worthwhile things to do.)

Kym and Andrea in front of the Palazzo Veccio.

A more distant view of the Palazzo Veccio, looking under the arch of the Uffizi gallery. The Uffizi is one of the best art museums in Europe, and it has queues to prove it.

Ponte Vecchio the next morning.

Another view of Ponte Santa Trinità from Ponte Vecchio.

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Andrea on Ponte Vecchio.

Looking along the north bank of the Arno toward the Uffizi, the arches to the right support the Medici walkway as it heads from the bridge toward the Ufizzi, through which it passes on its way toward Palazzo Vecchio. Again, nice life.

The reasonably symmetrical Uffizi gallery has a long open area with colonnades on each side. It is so named because it used to house the offices of the Florentine magistrates - hense "Offices."

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And coming out of the north side of the Uffizi is that private Medici walkway again, connecting to the Palazzo Vecchio.

One of the most famous sculptures in the Piazza della Signora is a replica of the Rape of the Sabines by Giambologna, which is in a 14th century open air gallery called the Loggia dei Lanzi, which is devoted to Renaissance sculpture. Apparently Rape of the Sabines was merely a study of form, and the historical subject matter was made up later on, when it was put on public display..

A wider view of the Loggia dei Lanzi.

This is a bronze sculpture of Perseus dealing with Medusa. Her neck has bronze guts spilling out of it, which was a nice touch.

We walked up from Piazza della Signora toward the duomo.

A building along the way..

So this is the duomo, or cathedral.

It's one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe, largely because of the wonderful marble from stone quarries that have been in continuous use since Roman times. Despite the brightness and color of the design, it was actually started in 1296 and built over the next couple hundred years. In 1419 the Florentines held a competition to design a suitable dome, which was the only bit that hadn't been completed. The winning dome design by Brunelleschi was unique in that it required no scaffolding to build.

This is actually a 19th century facade, though it matches the rest of the building. The old facade was demolished in the 16th century because the Renassance Florentines considered it to old fashioned.

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From a side-street. It dwarfs everything else around it; only four cathedrals are larger, including St. Peter's in the Vatican and St. Paul's in London.

Andrea, Dan and Kym, with the massive Brunelleschi dome behind them.

Inside the Duomo, looking up.

And after a climb involving a seemingly endless series of spiral staircases ...

... we get to look back down at the nave from the dome. It's a long way down.

Fortunately for people climbing the dome, a massive salad-bar-style sneeze guard keeps people safely confined to the walkway.

We got a wonderful up-close of the paintings on the inside of the dome.

Looking down toward the bell tower from the very top.

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That open square with the big facade on the left is the Piazza della Republica, which I otherwise didn't photograph in its entirety. But there it is.

The streets around the duomo are rather charming ...

... and quite a few buildings feature Renaissance frescos.

This is where we skip the wonderful photos of Michelangelo's David in the Academy, which I was not allowed to take. This sundial is on a building on Via Cesare Battisti, just north of the Academy.

Brunelleschi designed some parts of the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata ...

... including the Ospedale degli Innocenti, over which floats a green baloon.

A slightly better view of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, which was an orphanage designed to improve hard-knock lives, behind a statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand I.

To the east we explored some streets that outline the shape of the Roman amphitheatre that used to be here, and you can make out the shape by looking up at the curvature of the buildings.

South of the city there are some fabulous views of the skyline, if you're willing to climb the steps.

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San Miniato al Monte, here under the moon, is a beautiful church overlooking the city that is made of marble similar to that of the duomo.

A better view of the moon.

Dan and Kym climb the steps with the city view behind them.

I had to use some long-exposure settings inside San Miniato al Monte to take photos. Believe it or not this is a Romanesque church started in 1013, though much of the marble is 12th century. It's very different in style to what would be called Romanesque in Britain.

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The exposure time had some fun effects.

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In the crypt. Tell me this doesn't look like a scene from one of the Myst games. Some of the columns here were borrowed from Roman ruins.

Villas overlooking Florence at sunset.

And a nice view of the River Arno with Ponte Vecchio.

Same thing, but with the medieval tower of Palazzo Vecchio as well.

We at not far from the church of Santa Croce, which looks lovely at night.

The next morning we explored the Uffizi gallery. This is looking out the window toward Palazzo Vecchio.

And towards Ponte Vecchio. (This is another nice view of that long Medici passage, which runs along the top of the bridge and then toward the Uffizi at the left. Nice life.)

The Bargello is much like the Palazzo Vecchio, as both are medieval civic buildings.

We crossed the River Arno to explore the area called Oltrarno, and I snapped this photo. I suppose you could call it an HDR (high dynamic range) photo because I used a well-captured sky from one photo with a river and city view from another.

Via Maggio in Oltrarno.

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This is Palazzo Pitti, the palace of the Medici family.

A building overlooking the palace.

This famous fountain in Oltrarno ...

... has a Medici seal above it. The Medici seal's distinctive six circles appear all over Florence.

The Colonna della Giustizia in Piazza di Santa Trinita is a column from Rome that was given to Cosimo I, one of the Medici family, who had it raised in the location where he heard the news of a battle his that his forces had won, assuring his power.

Via Calzaioli at night.

Andrea and I visited the Palazzo Vecchio the next day. It rained.

The medieval atrium is heavily decorated.

Again, that Medici seal, which decorates a staircase ceiling (as well as other parts of the palace).

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