Florence

I’ve been off touring for a few days, and it feels like I’ve been away for ages. 

Last Tuesday I took the frecciarossa, the very fast train, to Florence - a trip that takes only one and a half hours on the super-rapido.   By 1.30pm I was at the Santa Maria Novella station and in my lovely room at the Rinascimento Palace by 2.00 (a hotel, despite the name – although any multi-storey apartment building in Italy is a palazzo.)

My hotel was just across the Ponte Vecchio on the Oltrano side.  From my window I could literally throw a stone into the Arno River.

 

Outside my hotel, towards the Ponte Vecchio

 Florence was humming.  On the Ponte Vecchio, the medieval bridge, the crowd was often so thick it was impossible to walk.  But the views of the Arno, on an almost-perfect blue day were perfect.

The Arno at dusk

I took a walk up to Santa Maria in Novella at dusk, the façade lined with Florence’s customary green, white and rose marble.   The basilica looks out onto one of the biggest piazzas in the city, at the moment hosting events for students enrolling in the Erasmus Program, giving them an opportunity to partake some of their studies in Florence. ( And students are everywhere in Florence – milling about the pubs, riding their bikes at breakneck speed, or gathering on the bridges to practice their Italian and chat up the locals.) 

Brunelleschi, who later designed the great dome of Florence for the Santa Maria Del Fiore designed the pulpit here at S.M. in Novella – purportedly where Galileo was first attacked by the clergy, after which he was indicted for his anti-geocentric views.  

The interior of medieval churches can be somewhat gloomy, however  to enter the courtyard of Santa Maria is lovely, with its frescoes fading away to gentle sepia colours.  In the centre the little garden was full of wild daisies and grasses.  Leading off the courtyard are the Passages of the Dead (I suspect kids would love this!) where tombstones, fragments of statuary and other mementoes are affixed in one long, and curiously uplifting passage.

The Passages of the Dead

The courtyard of Santa Maria in Novella

 

A lovely first day in Florence.  Uffizi tour tomorrow.