Tag Archives: Architecture

Aiming for Pisa mind

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Friday 9 May 2025 – Our target today was to get to Pisa, meet our friend Caroline, who will be joining us for some of our walk on the Via Francigena, and meet a guide at 3pm in order to have a guided tour. We weren’t quite sure of what; of course there’s the famous leaning tower*, but the guide was due to meet us at the hotel, which was some 15 minutes walk from the site of the tower. Was there anything else worth seeing in the town of Pisa apart from the tower? In the end, it didn’t matter, as you’ll find out of you stay with me, here.

To get to Pisa, we took the train, buying tickets online from TrenItalia for a very reasonable €9.30, and finding that one could add them to Google wallet – overall a very neat way of handling the ticket. Then we hefted our cases down the really rather awkward steps leading from the hotel to the ground floor and trundled them, a ten minute walk, to the station.

Inside, it was what a supercilious Brit might call a typical Italian scene – mobs of people all trying to get somewhere else through the press surrounding the departure info board.

Apart from people getting in my fucking way all the time, getting to the train was fine and the rest of the journey proceeded uneventfully for an hour, until we detrained at Pisa. The platform was black with people, but we eventually found our way out to the station forecourt and trundled our bags a further ten minutes to the Hotel Bologna, where, delightfully, both Caroline and our room were waiting for us.

We spent a few minutes sorting ourselves out and then joined Caroline on an expedition to seek coffee. Since we were due to see the tower that afternoon, we didn’t see much point in heading that way, but somehow seemed inexorably to be approaching it. We passed a small but delightfully gothic church, of Santa Maria della Spina,

before crossing the river (the Arno, which also flows through Florence) which offers quite a nice vista,

looking for somewhere to serve us coffee. Having got on one side of the botanical gardens, we couldn’t deviate from the path that was leading us towards the site of the tower, but eventually managed to make a right turn, which led us to a street with lots of restaurants and bars.

We stopped at the first place that looked like it might serve us coffee. By this stage, as I say, we were quite near the campus where the leaning tower is located. The tower is not the only building there; I vaguely remembered from a previous visit, some 23 years ago, that there was a church there, too. From a distance, it looked like there was a decent amount of restoration work going on

and I hoped that  this wouldn’t detract from our visit later.

After coffee and a couple of drinks, we decided that it must be lunchtime, and so went in search of somewhere appealing to eat. The street we were on was wall-to-wall restaurants, but they all seemed to have pictures of food outside them, and we are followers of the A A Gill gospel that says any restaurant displaying pictures of their food is best avoided. On a side road, we eventually stumbled across Grano Libero Ristorante senza Glutine, which just seemed to emit the right sort of vibes, so we settled in for some lunch.

And a very fine lunch it was (even though they didn’t have gin). The gluten-free bread they served was really excellent, and vastly superior to any GF bread I’ve ever sampled. We had a plentiful lunch of excellent meats, cheeses and vegetable-based dishes. It would have been nonsensical to walk back to the hotel to meet our guide, so Jane contacted her and arranged that we should meet by the tower.

During my last visit, the tower was closed to visitors because the Powers That Be were worried that the leaningness might imminently turn into falling downness. So I was really hoping that the restorative work that had been carried out over the last quarter century would allow us to climb the tower. As we approached, the auguries were hopeful.

We arrived at the site

and, prompt at 3pm, met the delightful Ilaria, who was to be our guide. It was immediately clear that she knew a vast amount about the history of Pisa. She showed us a map, similar to the one below, which highlighted the historic walls of Pisa.

I hadn’t known about the walls, or indeed much of the history of the place at all.  On the map above, our hotel was just south the the river, and the site of the tower, the Piazza del Duomo, is some 15 minutes brisk walk from the hotel. So you can see that this historic Piazza is really very small, and formed only a tiny part of the original city. But, tiny as it is, Ilaria was able to spend three hours giving us an engaging, intensive and educational tour round it.

The site has basically five buildings: the cathedral (consecrated 1118), the baptistry (1363), the tower (started 1173, finished 1372 – long story), a cemetery (1277 – late 15th century) and a hospital (founded 1257, modified at times up to 20th century and now largely used for administrative purposes so we didn’t venture inside). Because it was due to close first, we started in the baptistry.

In contrast to the one in Florence, this is round, rather than octogonal, which was the conventional shape for a baptistry. But the republic of Pisa decided that they wanted a building that was larger than Florence’s – part of a pretty intense rivalry between the two cities. At one stage, Pisa was far richer and more powerful than Florence, but Florence eventually grew to the point where it usurped the power and the position as the principal city.

It has twin domes, actually – an open, conical one and, outside it, a more conventionally-shaped one. This is illustrated in drawings inside.

It’s a wonderful ambience inside the building, and one that can’t really be conveyed photographically.

The conical inner dome gives the place an amazing accoustic, which we were lucky enough to hear demonstrated by a singer,

Ilaria gave us a huge amount of information about details that can be seen in the building. I won’t bore you with too many of them (OK, I can’t remember them that well, either) but there are carvings of exquisite detail, such as these in the central font.

Some of the stained glass represents significant people, typically donors, but one stood out;

Pope John Paul II, of course.

After the baptistry, we went into the church. From my previous visit, I knew there was a church there, but I hadn’t realised what a wonderful facade it has.

Again, Ilaria provided huge amounts of information about the history and details that can be seen both on the outside and

the inside, which is very opulently appointed. The wooden ceiling was destroyed by fire, but was restored in gilded wood, largely with the help of money from the Medicis…

hence the Medici symbol on the coat of arms at the centre of the ceiling. There are many fine things to look at

and again Ilaria provided bewlidering amounts of detail on the history of the place and the provenance of the decor.

Our next visit was to the cemetery.

Along each side are galleries with what were once fine frescoes

but which have been badly affected by a fire caused by an accidental bombing by US forces during the second world war. The fire melted the lead in the roof, which destroyed much of the fresco work and scarred the marble floors; the ongoing restoration is a full time job for 30 people.

Above, you can see an example of the damaged fresco work as well as sarcophagi by the walls and tombs with identifying coats of arms on the floor.

Finally, Ilaria took us to the famous tower and gave us a short history of its construction. It was built in three phases. Even after the first phase, it was clear that the tower was leaning, and the developers of the second and third phases took this into account as they added storeys to it.  The result is that the tower is not actually straight – it has a very subtle bend in it away from the direction it leans.

 

Again, it’s difficult to convey this photogaphically, but you might just be able to discern the bend in the photo above.

Ilaria also gave great detail about how the famous lean developed, shifted from left to right, became dangerous and was eventually tamed thanks to a proposed solution from an Englishman, John Burland, who suggested that the lean could be controlled by (carefully!) excavating the ground from underneath the tower. This was the solution which meant that the tower could be re-opened for people to visit it. So we did, of course. Caroline and I climbed the 251 steps, which run up the inside of the tower in a staircase just wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic. I have to say that it was quite a weird experience, as sometimes the steps tip you one way, sometimes the other; and the very final steps to the top are up a very much narrower spiral staircase, and are potentially quite trappy.

The tower is a bell tower, and there are still bells at the top, though it’s clear that there is no mechanism for ringing them.

There’s a decent view over the city of Pisa from the top,

but to view the church from the top required some awkward squinting into the sun

(Jane had decided not to climb the tower, and, sitting in the museum cafe, was able to take that photo of me trying to get this photo).

Since the tower is hollow, one can look up the central column, where a plumbline has been installed, to emphasis how much the tower leans.

Ilaria’s command of the details of the history and religious significance of the intricacies around the site was truly impressive; our time with her was very concentrated and I haven’t done it any kind of justice above; but I hope you get a flavour of the site.

We had only today in Pisa; tomorrow we travel on to Lucca, which has a reputation of being a very fine place to visit. I hope to be able to demonstrate that in these pages, so stay tuned to find out, eh?

* I couldn’t let this opportunity pass without reviving an old joke about a famous painting of a three-legged dog relieving himself against a lamppost. It was called “The Leaning Pee of Towser”. I’ll get my coat.

A Final Flurry in Florence

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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!

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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?