Tag Archives: Architecture

A Final Flurry in Florence

9 Replies

Thursday 8 May 2025 – Jane had booked tickets for the Uffizi galleries with an entry time of 10.45, which made for a relaxed start to the day – a leisurely breakfast and then a 15-minute walk to get there. The galleries are very imposing slabs of masonry which flank a street, unimaginatively called Piazzale degli Uffizi. You go in one side, walk through galleries along it, and then cross over via a bridge to the other side before walking back along that. The best view to get a grasp of it comes, actually, from inside.

The Piazzale runs down the middle, and the entrance gates are on the right in this picture; typically one approaches the complex from the direction of the Palazzi Vieccho, which you can see in the distance. Actually, finding the right gate is the immediate challenge; we had to find Gate 3 in order to pick up our pre-booked tickets before entering through Gate 1. The signposting provided is very discreet, and it had us trawling the length of the Piazzale from top to bottom before indicating that we should have been back to the top. A friendly army chap pointed us in the right direction and we picked up our tickets with no problem, then crossed the Piazzale to Gate 1, where there were several queues.

The queues, while substantial, are very well-managed, and promptly at our allocated time we filed in through Gate 1, passed security – and equally promptly walked the length of the building so we were back at the Palazzo Vecchio end. There followed four flights of steps to get to the top gallery, which was, well, very museum-ish.

The ceilings to these corridors are amazing – every panel is different.

You make your way along this main drag, every so often being offered a side show, typically featuring the work of a prominent artist, e.g. Botticelli. So you can pile in and take a look.

The Botticelli exhibits were in more than one side room, and the main interest lay in the second room.

“Primavera” is clearly a painting of great interest, as is Venus on the half-shell.

One has to fight through towards the front to get half a chance of an unobstructed view.  As usual, lots of people were not interested in seeing a unique piece of classical art unless they were in the foreground.

Harrumph.

At the end of the main drag, the corridor turns a sharp right and then right again to take one back down the other side. It’s here that one can see the galleries in the first photo in this post; also, since one is by now at the river end of things, you get a superb view of the bridges of Florence

with the Ponte Vecchio nicely in the foreground.

On the way back along the other corridor, one is offered such masters of art as Michaelagelo and Da Vinci. We popped in to the Raphael gallery, which was

a bunfight; I managed to get a photo of his picture of John the Baptist as a young man.

Then we got to the best bit – the cafeteria. You’ll have twigged by now that all this classical art does nothing for me, so I was glad to be able to sit down for a coffee and a beer. There’s a nice rooftop terrace, with fantastic views over the city which have been carefully obscured by fairly high walls around the terrace. You can get an eyeful of the upper stories of the cathedral campanile and the Palazzo Vecchio

but that is, frankly, about it. Coffee over, it’s simply a matter of

four flights of stairs down and back out into the Piazza della Signoria, by the Palazzo Vecchio, where one can get a nice snap of David and Goliath Hercules doing the “protect the city” bit.

As ever, one has to jockey for position,

but there’s also the opportunity to see Neptune having a slash.

Well, even the gods have to go, and he presumably must normally have a silent pee as in “swimming”.

Our next port of call was something that Bianca, our guide of yesterday, had recommended. From the outside, it’s not particularly prepossessing

but inside the Opificio delle Pietre Dure  is a whole different story, something I found hugely more engaging than all that celebrated classical art in the Uffizi. It is home to the museum of artistic production in semi-precious stones, and the artwork on display is wonderful to behold. There are works of art, all executed in stone, some small

Bible stories

and some larger, like this tabletop, which is a good metre and a half wide.

The inlay stone work is phenomenal – here is one of the birds from that table top.

A common theme is the reconstruction of paintings in decorative stone.

Stone work above, original painting below

and there are many examples on view. They’re all exquisite and some are seriously impressive; shown below are two examples with close ups of details below (I hope; I can’t be held responsible for how your browser decides it’s going to show you this).

Upstairs in this small museum is given over to showcasing the workshop – the workstations that artists will sit at,

the tools they use

and the stones that form the raw materials.

I think we spent longer in this relatively tiny place than we did in the Uffizi. It was a delightful interlude. However, lunch was beckoning and we had to head out into the crowded streets and back down towards the river, past the cathedral, where the street artists were clearly setting themselves up for the expected weekend rush of punters.

(The city was, once again, very crowded – many large tour groups and also groups of schoolkids, largely younger than the ones we’d seen yesterday). We had a little time to spare, and Jane had found a Basilica for us to investigate – the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. It is at one end of a very pleasant piazza (I don’t, I think, need to tell you its name, which was not imaginatively coined)

and is a striking building.

The distinctive Florentine white-and-green is not in marble but is painted on, Nonetheless, it’s a splendid edifice, and the inside is matchingly splendid.

There is some nice stained glass, both traditional and more modern

and some sumptuously decorated chapels.

Even the gift shop gets the treatment.

The Basilica boasts not one but two cloisters: a small one

which has a remarkable Spanish Chapel off one arm featuring astonishing artwork

with a stunning ceiling;

and a larger one

with artworks in every arch.

Once outside, we saw that the splendid facade was not matched by the view of the back of the Basilica. It’s very handsome, sure, but not as striking as the front.

I had booked us a late lunch (acting on a suggestion from ChatGPT, actually) at somewhere grandly calling itself the Angel Roofbar. After a certain amount of blundering about we found it, five storeys up, and settled down for a Nice Lunch.  I found it a bit of a strange place. I had been expecting a restaurant, but it was more a cocktail bar which did some food. The food was  good and the service very affable, but both food and drink service stopped prompt at 3pm, which was a bit odd since we had a 2,30 table; we had to plead with the waitress to make us a drink to have with our main courses, which was a bit unusual.  The views over the city I had been expecting were decent enough but not remarkable

but anyway we departed refreshed with only a couple of things left on the day’s agenda. One was a matter of practicality: we have to catch a train earlyish tomorrow and we wanted to make sure we knew roughly how the station worked, so we walked over to check out what we’ll have to do tomorrow morning. En route, we passed a very attractive wine bar

with people standing in the sunshone outside with their glasses of wine; and a nice piece of marketing at a bistro

with a replica of the Duomo featuring corks – very cute.

Having checked out the station, we headed back towards our hotel, going via another place that Bianca had recommended – the Annunziata Church itself. We couldn’t get in yesterday because a service was under way (you’ll of course remember the photos of the little cloister outside the doors that I shared yesterday), but it was open now, and so we went in.

Blimey!

It’s quite a place,

with a multitude of highly decorated chapels along each side

and a remarkably-painted cupola.

So we were glad that we’d made the effort to see inside, as it made a fitting end to the day’s perambulations.

Or almost, anyway.

We had one more thing to do, on the recommendation of a friend – to go and see the cathedral lit up in the evening. So we did. It’s very beautiful.

So, th-th-that’s all (for Florence), folks! Tune in again soon to see how our time in Pisa worked out.

Ready, Aim, Firenze!

2 Replies

Tuesday 6 May 2025 – And so the adventure begins!

As is normal with us, we can tell that we’re travelling because we have to get up at an obscure hour of the day. In today’s case, it was an 0500 alarm in order to catch a flight to Florence, so that we could have a few days’ kulcher in advance of starting the long walk to Rome, which peregrination is the main reason for being in The Foreign.

We had treated ourselves to a night in the Sofitel by Heathrow Terminal 5 to mitigate the early start by as much as possible. Upon reflection, we could quite easily have simply started from home on the same schedule, but never mind; it started to get us into the rhythm of living out of suitcase, as we will be doing for the next month.

Courtesy of last year’s extravagant travel schedule, I find myself at the Silver level in BA’s club, which gave us priority check-in and access to the club lounge and an opportunity to snarf some free fruit and yoghurt rather than paying £28 per head for the same service at the Softel. Lots has been written about BA’s service, much of it uncomplimentary, but in their defence I have to point out that Marmite is available in their lounge; a lot may thus be forgiven. And actually everything went pretty smoothly on the flight, despite the fact that the aeroplane was parked up at Terminal 3, which necessitated a bus journey long enough to make us wonder whether the driver actually knew the way. But she found us a plane and we piled on board, Jane by the window and me on a middle seat.

Which was OK until it became clear that the aisle seat next to me had been reserved by a very overweight person, who I felt should either have paid for two seats, or possibly reimbursed me the proportion of my space that she occupied. I dealt with this is the only way a British chap can; by saying nothing and pretending not to be aggrieved whilst hoping that my seething indignation somehow conveyed itself to my right.

And I was unable to finish the Super Fiendish Sudoku! Still, it was nice to see the tips of the Alps poking through the clouds as we flew over them.

Our luggage arrived into the baggage hall very shortly after we did, which was nice, and there was a very affable chap awaiting us to whisk us to our hotel in Florence, the Hotel Camilla. At reception, we were greeted by the very affable and capable Jessica, but only after we’d puffed our way up two storeys of really quite chunky steps. Also, it’s a listed building, so no lift is ever going to be possible. The room we have is perfectly nice, has a decent view out of the window,

and, importantly, a kettle, which held the prospect of combining nicely with the bags of Twining’s finest Earl Grey we’d brought with us. But first, we had A Mission with some important objectives: lunch; a pharmacy to buy the sunscreen we’d forgotten to pack; and some kind of bag to carry stuff around when sightseeing. We haven’t travelled since October, and we’re a bit out of practice, it would seem.

Jessica recommended a pharmacy and a fruitful area for lunch prospecting and so off we set, into the narrow, crowded streets of Florence.

The hotel’s location is pretty good – well done to WalkThe Camino.com for its choice. We are very near many of the major sights of Florence, such as the humble San Lorenzo Basilica

built when Florence  took a dose of its own Medici. It’s actually larger than the cathedral, which was built by the Medicis from their own money, so I suppose they deserved this cute little chapel. We popped inside to take a look.

Without being overwheming it’s quite spectactular, with a marvellous ceiling,

some major artworks,

St. Lawrence being griddled

The Annunciation

some major carvery by Donatello,

Originally a pulpit – careful examination reveals a door

and a lovely cloister courtyard

featuring some very eye-catching statuary.

Further works by the sculptor, Andrea Roggi, are outside the Basilica, but many were draped in unattractive punters, and so were photographically unrewarding. This one – Tree of Life – is very impressive.

Next stop was for some lunch, taken pleasantly al fresco outside Trattoria Antellesi, to fortify ourselves for some more wandering about. For it is given that when Jane and Steve visit a place, they go for a walk. Obviously.

Jane suggested a route which led past the astonishingly large central market, which is both outdoor (hugely redolent of Italian leather)

and indoors.

Our path then took us to the Duomo, the main cathedral of Florence. Having only seen this photo

and not really appreciated any of the detail in it, I was unprepared for the impact it had on me. It is simply staggering.

The colour, the detail, the scope – amazing.

and it really annoys me that people, faced with such majestic beauty, want nothing more than to interpose themselves as foreground interest.

Walking round it reveals that the brightness and colour has been the result of some considerable work; other areas are awaiting attention

but will, I’m sure, display the signature white and green colours in due course. One can see some progress has been made elsewhere.

Another obvious Thing To Do in Florence is to visit the Ponte Vecchio, so we headed off in that direction, past various slabs of Florentine masonry,

eventually arriving at the crowded bridge

before finding our way along the river so that we could look back at it to appreciate it better.

Others, of course, were less taken with the view.

We passed a couple of interesting sights. This rendering of the Mona Lisa

was worth a closer look.

and we caught a glimpse of the Bacchus Fountain in the Pitti Palace

 

as I searched for a possible place for launching a drone for an aerial shot. I think I’m going to be unlucky in that; drones are, unsurprisingly, not allowed in the city, but I remain hopeful that I can find somewhere legit to launch for a quick photo.

There were, unsurprisingly, many artistic touches to be seen across our short walk, including coats of arms on the sides of buildings, such as this one of the Medici family,

and a couple of statues as enigmatic as they were large.

No, it’s not clear what these figures represent. That’s Art for you, innit?

We returned to the hotel to find that the sainted Jessica had provided some milk, which meant that we could induge in a restorative cup or two of Twinings finest Earl Grey.

We have a proper formal guided tour to look forward to tomorrow, so that we may learn a little more of the history and culture of this remarkable city, and so that I might be able to make better informed comment about what we’ve seen. Do please come back to find out if this actually is the case, won’t you?

 

Paddington, Barely

Leave a Reply

Wednesday 25 & Thursday 26 September 2024 – Our departure from Belrose was also a departure from my habit of taking a taxi to the airport.  Lorraine and Paul warned us against trying to convince a taxi company reliably to send someone into the northern wilds of the Sydney suburbs, so we took our first-ever Uber. We had a very pleasant drive with, at the wheel, a lady who was a Brisbane native and who was therefore able to give us a few thoughts about Things To Do In Brisbane. The traffic was a little heavy, and the journey to the airport took about an hour, but we arrived on schedule, with plenty of time before our flight’s departure; and in a thankfully undramatic departure from their established norm, Virgin Australia got us from Sydney to Brisbane without any form of buggering us about. My friend Phil was waiting there to take us to his place, which is in Red Hill, the area of Brisbane next to one called Paddington.

I’ve talked before about connections; thus far it has only been about those formed with fellow travellers.  The one between Phil and me is a lot deeper; we have been friends since babyhood. His family emigrated to Australia in 1967 as “ten pound Poms” (a phrase our Uber driver was so young that she’d never heard it, by the way), but Phil and I stayed in contact by letter over the years and met occasionally, as time, location, circumstances and finances dictated. Right from the first time we met again, which was in 1974, it was clear that the friendship had survived; that encounter, and every one since, has been a source of great pleasure.

Phil has a lovely house, which was originally a Queensland workman’s cottage and which, in true Australian fashion, was transported in one piece to its current location. It’s “upside down”, meaning the bedrooms are on the ground floor and the living space upstairs, and this makes great sense, given the usually hot Queensland climate; the downstairs rooms are the cooler ones, and it leaves a grand upstairs deck. Rather magnificently, the deck has a tree growing through it,

which provides shade for those sitting out on the deck with a glass of something cold, which was us, quite a lot of the time.

The Red Hill/Paddington area is an interesting one to walk around and so, for the first couple of days, and, with Phil and his insightful commentary, that’s what we did. Obviously.

The Queensland workman’s cottage vibe is something that is evident over the whole area that we strolled around.

Most of them are well-maintained and in very good nick and some

have been quite considerably extended.

There’s a variety of approaches to decor, from nice paint jobs and interesting roof tiles

to more elaborate flourishes on the larger buildings.

As well as the timber cottages, there are more substantial constructions

and some nice use of street art on the outside of some.

This, for example, is the local cinema

and it’s not just the front of the building that’s been decorated.

If you look at the left hand picture above, you can see that the area is not necessarily flat and level.  The gradients of some of the hills are simply breathtaking,

so walking about is akin to a major workout at times,

but the area’s location does mean that you get some superb views over downtown Brisbane.

So steep that handrails are needed to help you walk up it!

Among the many coffee bars and restaurants there are some interesting shops

Short Bach and sides?

and other little artistic touches.

The trees lining the roads make the streets very attractive,

and there’s one majestic specimen which is at the top of a hill

making one (OK, me) grateful for the shady seats in which to take a breather – and watch the laughing kookaburras which had come to laugh at us.

In the centre of Paddington there’s a building which used to be a theatre

now repurposed to house a huge variety of stalls selling antiques, bric-a-brac and a whole variety of other things.

Some angles give away the theatrical origins of the building – you can see the proscenium arch here.

Some wag in the local authority had had the idea to make a “Kooka Trail” around the area, presumably intended as a distraction for kids, but also valuable for the entertainment of passing photographers.

though I prefer the real thing, which we saw in various places, including near Phil’s house.

Apparently, kookaburras have been absent in recent years, and they’re only now making a reappearance. I like them, so was glad to be able to see (and hear!) them.

After two days and 11km of walking around this delightful part of the city, it was a pleasure to be able to sit on Phil’s deck with a glass of something cold as the sun went down

This describes our first couple of days in Queensland. We had two more days before heading even further North! and I’ll tell you all about it – some other time.