UDC 793: Travel. Leisure. Pursuits: Florence

Showing posts with label Florence. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

A tale of two medieval cities: Fes and Florence

Earlier this year, in May, I visited Fes, Morocco. Specifically, Fes el Bali, the oldest of the three cities of Fes. The old medina in Fes el Bali dates back to 859, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and, some say, one of the largest car-free urban areas in the world. The old medina was simply amazing and, when walking the streets, one can see why there are no cars, some streets being just a loaded donkey wide! While in Fes I was also able to briefly visit the "new" city, Fes Jdid (dating from only 1276), and the "Ville Nouvelle" built by the French in the 20th century (our group went there for pizza one night when everyone but me it seems was tired of tangines!).

And then, just back in November, was my next medieval city, Florence. Though dating back historically to pre-Christian Roman times, Florence really hit its urban stride just about 150 years after the founding of Fes, in around 1000. From there, it was all art and architecture (and banking and warring) for the next 600 years or so.

Like Fes, Florence was full of narrow streets (not as narrow as Fes el Bali, but generally more suited to Vespas than autos); also like Fes, Florence is surrounded by the more modern Florence of wide highways and McDonald's. Also, filled with churches (instead of mosques), religion (in Florence perhaps more historically) has an inescapable religious tint.

And speaking of tints, rich browns were a shared color of both. Roof tiles, brick walls, all contributing to the colors of the cities.

And just as an aside, let's not forget Taos Pueblo!

Now last plus one summer (2011) I was able to visit the Taos Pueblo (another UNESCO World Heritage site and the oldest continuously inhabited area of North America (dating from 1000, just a little younger, relatively speaking) than Fes.

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Good morning on my last day in Florence / "It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room ..." E.M. Forster

"It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road." - E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (1908)

I didn't have a "room with a view" (my window looked out on a small side street just off the Piazza Santa Croce), but a very good room it was. The Dante Room (only room on the ground floor) of the Hotel Santa Croce. All the staff at the hotel were fantastic and the location couldn't have worked out better for both work and fun.

w.hotelsantacroce.it/

Lufthansa 106: FRA to MUC

Gate A22

Incipit Vita Nova ... so long Florence

In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under such rubric I find written many things; and among them the words which I purpose to copy into this little book; if not all of them, at the least their substance.

In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova. Sotto la quale rubrica io trovo scritte le parole le quali è mio intendimento d'assemplare in questo libello; e se non tutte, almeno la loro sentenzia.

- La Vita Nuova, Dante

A very successful trip ... and now, off to the airport ...

Saturday, November 02, 2013

Buona notte, Firenze ... until the morning ...

"I got lost in Florence at nine o'clock, one night, and staid lost in that labyrinth of narrow streets and long rows of vast buildings that look all alike, until toward three o'clock in the morning. It was a pleasant night and at first there were a good many people abroad, and there were cheerful lights about. Later, I grew accustomed to prowling about mysterious drifts and tunnels and astonishing and interesting myself with coming around corners expecting to find the hotel staring me in the face, and not finding it doing any thing of the kind." - Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad (1869)

Well, I can't say that I ever got lost again after the first morning in Florence, of course my circle was a pretty small of the historic old city, Ciao, til the morning.

Here's a few 21:00ish shots as I walked back across the Arno to the Hotel Santa Croce:

Henry James on the "extravagant" figure of Dante as depicted at Santa Croce

"The place is the great Florentine Valhalla, the final home or memorial harbour of the native illustrious dead, but that consideration of it would take me far. It must be confessed moreover that, between his coarsely-imagined statue out in front and his horrible monument in one of the aisles, the author of The Divine Comedy, for instance, is just hereabouts rather an extravagant figure". - Henry James, Italian Hours (1909)

I must confess that James is spot on in his assessment of the sculptural renditions of Dante that have become the model for how we picture him. I can't imagine that he's always that stern or unhappy looking as depicted at Santa Croce!

Detail of Dante's Tomb, Santa Croce

The great Florentines in Santa Croce, with some side comments by Mark Twain

One of my main goals in Florence was to visit Santa Croce and see the tombs and monuments to great Florentines. Santa Croce did not disappoint. From outside on the piazza, it's hard to grasp its size, inside it's immense. Though Santa Maria Novella is still probably my favorite of the "big three" in Florence, Santa Croce, whose bells I heard at night and which I passed every day, remains special.

Here's some comments from Mark Twain, from Innocents Abroad (1869) on the monuments of Santa Croce:

Caption

Galileo
That we had lived to see his dust in honored sepulchure in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of literati, and not to Florence or her rulers.

Dante
We saw Dante's tomb in that church, also, but we were glad to know that his body was not in it; that the ungrateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would give much to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure that high honor to herself.

Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini (not Raphael)

"We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, (I suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside elsewhere and rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion in Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the Arno."

(from left: Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Rossini)

Henry James on the Duomo in Florence: "for all its solemn hugeness, strikes the same note of would-be reasoned elegance and cheer"

The Cathedral, externally, for all its solemn hugeness, strikes the same note of would-be reasoned elegance and cheer; it has conventional grandeur, of course, but a grandeur so frank and ingenuous even in its parti-pris. It has seen so much, and outlived so much, and served so many sad purposes, and yet remains in aspect so full of the fine Tuscan geniality, the feeling for life, one may almost say the feeling for amusement, that inspired it.

Henry James, Italian Hours (1909)

"She fixed her eyes wistfully on the tower of the palace, which rose out of the lower darkness like a pillar of roughened gold" - E.M. Forster

She fixed her eyes wistfully on the tower of the palace, which rose out of the lower darkness like a pillar of roughened gold. It seemed no longer a tower, no longer supported by earth, but some unattainable treasure throbbing in the tranquil sky. Its brightness mesmerized her, still dancing before her eyes when she bent them to the ground and started towards home.

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (1908)

Along the Arno with E.M. Forster / "... the Arno lost its muddy solidity and began to twinkle."

Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its muddy solidity and began to twinkle. There were a few streaks of bluish-green among the clouds, a few patches of watery light upon the earth, and then the dripping facade of San Miniato shone brilliantly in the declining sun.

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (1908)

Friday, November 01, 2013

The Vasari Corridor: The "Serpentine artery which crosses the Arno" and connects the Uffizi with the Pitti Palace

The Pitti Palace is of course a collection of masterpieces; they jostle each other in their splendour, they perhaps even, in their merciless multitude, rather fatigue our admiration. The Uffizi is almost as fine a show, and together with that long serpentine artery which crosses the Arno and connects them, making you ask yourself, whichever way you take it, what goal can be grand enough to crown such a journey, they form the great central treasure-chamber of the town. But I have been neglecting them of late for love of the Academy, where there are fewer copyists and tourists, above all fewer pictorial lions, those whose roar is heard from afar and who strike us as expecting overmuch to have it their own way in the jungle.

James, Henry. Italian Hours (1909)

I had the opportunity to take a tour of the Vasari Corridor (31 October 2013) while at a meeting (organized by the local hosts). To be honest, I'd never heard of it before. At first, I decided to pass on it. The tour was a bit expensive and had to be booked ahead of time, so, well. No problem. But then, when I got to the conference, there were still spots open. In the meantime I had looked into it more and it did seem interesting. A nearly kilometer long corridor built to that the Medici could walk between the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace without running into riff-raff. It pretty much runs above ground and then across the Ponte Vecchio.

So I signed up. We had a great tour guide who knew Medici family history probably better than his own. As you entered through a special locked door and descended a staircase to the start of the Corridor, it looked like this would be quite interesting. There were also windows on each side with spectacular views (especially of the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio). The only problem with the art in the Corridor. Hundreds, maybe thousands of painting line it from one end to the other. A multitude of portraits of Medicis and others by, dare I say, 3rd and 4th tier artists. Even a number of bad copies of better known paintings. A few sprinkled gems (a Vige-Le Brun and an Angelica Kauffmann). A kilometer and two hours into the tour, the art picked up with more modern works, specifically self-portraits from artists all over the world. J.S. Sargent, Anders Zorn, Robert Rauschenberg, Rapheal Soyer, and others.

The hour was getting late and we needed to pick up checked bags so we dashed back through the Corridor and more - seeming - clicks of the Uffizi. An interesting tour, but not one I need to repeat soon!