Firenze Trip – Getting Culture

Continued from: Firenze Trip – Getting Acclimated

In the screen shot above you will note the highlighted route takes a few gentle curves.  What we did not know until it was too late, was almost every time the street curved, it changed names.  The street names were embedded in the walls of building at intersections of two streets.  It got even more confusing when coming to a piazza with many more streets intersecting.

I also quickly learned that unlike the live app, when I pinched my phone screen to make the image larger, it did not reveal the hidden street names so we could track where the names changed.  It just made the image larger.  To remedy this, before we left the hotel, I began to also take a screen shot of an enlarged map at turns so we would know if we were getting on the correct street.

This did not work completely either so what we started doing was I would use my screen shots to get us in the general area where we were going and then my wife would open the map app on her phone to get us to our intended destination.

So enough of this minutia, let’s get to the fun stuff.

At my brother’s urgings, we had purchased in advance timed tickets to enter three of the major museums everyone should see.  First up on Wednesday morning was the Uffizi which was just up the street from our hotel (one of the two times we did not get lost).  Uffizi in Italian means offices and that is what the building used to be, the banking business offices of the wealthy Medici family.  It began to display a private art collection on the top floor in 1581 and it was finally opened to the public in 1769.  It is now the central repository of Italian Renaissance masterpieces.

Also at my brother’s suggestion, we used the free Rick Steves walking tour guides which I would highly recommend with two caveats.  Each chapter features a photo of what you will see but it might not be until later in that chapter.  I sometimes found myself looking all around for the featured art piece only to find it later in the walk.  Also, the tour guide focuses on the most significant art pieces in a given room. Unless you pause the guide, you will miss other art pieces in the same room.  But with that said, I would still recommend using it (we used four of his on this trip).

When we made our way up to the top floor, we found that the museum was packed.  I would hate to think what it would have been like in the high tourist season when my brother came.  Also, to get to some of the art pieces, you had to work your way around numerous private tour groups being led by someone speaking any variety of non-English languages.

If you are not familiar with Renaissance art, it is almost exclusively religious such as the Annunciation…

… or mythical such as Venus arriving at the shore after her birth.

Rick Steves’ Uffizi tour lasts one hour but only covers the top floor of the museum.  The museum is huge and has many great works.  We ended up spending almost two hours total touring the two floors.

While the Uffizi is mostly paintings, our second museum, the Accademia Gallery, is mostly sculptures, the most famous of which, Michealangelo’s David, was difficult to get up to with the crowd.

But with patience, I got close enough to get a photo without other tourists in the frame.

Being a much smaller museum, we spent less than an hour there.

Our third museum was the Capelle Medicee (Medici Chapels), which is the burial crypt for some of the Medici family as well as some famous dukes.  When we went upstairs from the crypt and walked into the Chapel of the Princes (which is a mausoleum for the grand dukes) , we were amazed by its beauty.  It was quite spectacular.

Moving away from Renaissance art, our next two museums were more scientific in nature.  The first featured DaVinci’s inventions, some of which were modern pieces built from his original drawings that you could actually operate.  It was amazing to see all the things he invented.

The other scientific museum was about Galileo, considered the father of modern astronomy.  While telescopes obviously featured large in the museum…

… I was particularly taken by this chemistry desk.

Our last museum was in contrast to all the others, a modern art museum that we just happened upon while walking one day (and I cannot even remember its name).

And although not a museum, the Duomo, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, is one of the most iconic images one sees in Florence being visible from many parts of the city due to its sheer size.

Construction started in 1296, but the technology did not exist until centuries later to construct the unique dome.  There are entry fee-based museums associated with it, but the cathedral itself is open to the public for free.  Walking inside, one can feel the vastness of this, the fourth largest church in the world.

There are so many museums in Florence, it would take weeks and weeks to visit them all.  We hit what we felt were the most important ones to see.  Because, naturally there were many more experiences we wanted to have on our trip.

      To be continued…