Tag Archives: art

Day 8 – Lucignano to Buonconvento – Short but interesting

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Wednesday 21 May 2025 – With only 13km to cover today, we could afford a leisurely start. Not too leisurely, though; our bags still have to be ready to be collected by 8am to be taken to our next destination. But at least the alarm was set for a slightly later time than heretofore.

The hotel had some interesting wall decorations: photos of places we have visited, such as Monteriggioni and San Gimignano and others, some of which we will pass through or near.  It also had a couple of items of Sienese interest: a picture of the 17 emblems of the contrade in suitably victorious poses

and a monochrome photo which gives a compelling insight into the excitement the Palio jockeys must inevitably face.

Breakfast (a typical Italian affair) over, we started out just after 9am, bidding farewell to Lucignano

as we carefully negotiated about half a kilometre of main road to get back to the Via, occasionally leaping into the undergrowth to ensure that the thundering great lorries missed us. (OK, I admit it – this was basically to avoid retracing our steps along yesterday’s lengthy diversion when a short cut – albeit not a recommended one – was available).

We rejoined the Via, which led over a railway

and then on a track beside it.

We had understood that the railway was practically disused, with traffic running only on special occasions, so I popped up to take some photos along the line (not very interesting) and to see whether walking along it was better underfoot than the path (not). So it was a bit of a shock when a train went past a few minutes later, I can tell you.

The temperature was agreeable – probably around 20°C, and the only signs of yesterday evening’s downpour were the reasonably high humidity, grass still wet on the track and some slightly slippy muddy patches. But getting our feet wet wasn’t a particular problem; we just walked on without any issues. The scenery was very agreeable and very Tuscan;

we will be going through the Val d’Orcia, which is a UNESCO World Heritage area where the extensive use of cypress trees was first adopted. As you can see, it has spread and is now a sort of pictorial shorthand for the landscapes of Tuscany.

Disused items of agricultural machinery were dotted around the area, original uses for which we wot not of (and neither, by the way, does Google Lens).

Also dotting the landscape were various artworks, some of which were definitely part of the “Museo de Arte Diffusa” (first works seen yesterday)

This one, at Ponte d’Arbia, probably represents pilgrims crossing the pilgrtim bridge

and some which probably weren’t.

At one point, astonishingly, we had the opportunity to fill in a questionnaire about our presence on the Via.

For the first time since we started out from Altopascio, we saw cattle;

and, later on, donkeys,

one of whom looked distinctly Eeyorish.

About halfway along the route was a place called Ponte d’Arbia, where, importantly, there was a coffee stop. Unsurprisingly, the place sported a bridge across the river Arbia,

but, we saw on the S-cape app, it also has a second bridge, the “Ponte del Pellegrino”. I was expecting this to be a rickety-rackety affair (minus the troll; trolls hate Italian sunshine), but I was very wrong indeed.

Located at the foot of the far side of the Ponte del Pellegrino

It was constructed in 2016, for a Jubilee Year (Giubileo della Misericordia) and renovated in 2024 in time for this year, which is also a Jubilee Year, albeit only a Giubileo Ordinario. (Both Jubilees were declared by Pope Francis.)

Ponte d’Arbia clearly has a local council who are invested in wayside art, no matter how incomprehensible.

After Ponte d’Arbia, we had to climb a couple of hills, the first quite small

but the second more substantial, and quite as steep as any of Siena’s streets, only longer.

The view from the top was nice, of course.

(I am really looking forward to doing a proper job of processing these images when I get home. What you see here is, broadly speaking, what comes out of the Sony camera, with a little tweaking via the Android Gallery app; but I will be able to benefit from a PC and my beloved DxO Photolab at home to get detail out of the RAW files.)

On our way up this final climb, we heard a very strange noise, which we first thought might have been some corvids having a row in the trees. But then we passed a pond,

and realised that the deafening racket was from frogs. I couldn’t capture them on video, but just listening to them provided a pleasing diversion for several minutes.

Going down the other side of the hill, in the distance, we saw Buonconvento

and were soon walking into the town,

which is not large, but its centro storico is very attractive.

Our hotel, the rather more modern Ghibellino,

had a room ready and our bags had arrived, so we were able to hose ourselves down and head out for lunch. Jane had booked, on the strength of proximity and Google reviews, a table for 2pm, and so we found our way to the Ristorante Bar Amici di Campriano.

It’s not a posh place and seems on the face of it a bit chaotic (it’s also a delicatessen), but we found ourselves a table and ordered ourselves a G&T (no ice – the machine was broken). We liked the look of a couple of the pasta dishes (unusual for me) and ordered them and some vegetables, but no secundi piatti. The pasta was delicious, but we were a  bit puzzled not to get the veg. It turned out that they were planning to wait and serve us the veg as our main course, which is very Italian, I suppose; but we got them to bring out the spinach and the fennel early, and very good it was, too. The service was very friendly and the whole thing was very good v. for m. We had a chat wth Il Patrone, who has his own vineyard and uses the place to serve his wine. All very engaging, if a little informal.

We pottered round the corners of Buonconvento after lunch. There aren’t many of them, as the centro storico is quite small, but it is lovely.

The church, of St. Peter and St. Paul, has some lovely stained glass.

It is clearly modern, featuring JFK, Gandhi, Pope John Paul II (we think) and Martin Luther King, as well as other faces we cannot indentify with certainty; but we feel that the common theme is that they all died for their faith or beliefs.

At first, I thought that Buonconvento would feature a good convent, but actually its name stems from the Latin bonus conventus, “happy place”. Not a bad name, I reckon – we found it very pleasant.

Today was a short and pleasant day. Tomorrow will be harder work!

The total ascent will be over 500m, so I feel the need for walking poles coming on. The weather forecast is OK – 24°C, no rain until later in the day – and there should be at least one place for a reviving coffee (and quite probably a beer) en route. We’ll be heading into the Val d’Orcia so I expect to be taking lots more photos of cypress-strewn landscapes. Come back soon to find out if that was the case, eh?

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.

Florence in more depth

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Wednesday 7 May 2025 – Long Post Alert!

In what I suspect will be a relatively rare occurrence during this junket, we were allowed a lie-in to 7am before having to get under way for the day. The hotel offers a decent breakfast (meaning mainly that they have Earl Grey available) but in somewhat cramped conditions. No matter; at 0900 we were ready to meet our guide for the morning, Bianca.

She is clearly very knowledegable about Florence, its history and culture, and Jane very much enjoyed learning about Florence in more depth. Me, not so much; I had enormous difficulty penetrating Bianca’s very Italian delivery and accent, particularly as it was often set against the backdrop of traffic, roadworks and many, many large tour groups.

The city was crowded today – there were plenty of tourists and schoolkids in large groups, making me suspect that at least one large cruise liner had berthed at Livorno, and that this was the time of year that schools favoured for an attempt to inject kulcher into the little ones. The practical upshot was that I didn’t get a great deal of extra information from our tour. However, Jane did, so collectively we learned a lot and got some photos of wonderful places that we might not have otherwise found.

I’m not a habitual, practised or skillful street photographer, but Florence offers some nice vignettes, if you’re not careful. I managed to get told off several times during the day: taking photos of art sellers, who clearly didn’t appreciate  being photographed;

and photos from some angles which caused people in uniform in key locations to tell me to move away from where I was.

Standing on the wrong side of a piece of rope to avoid too many TV aerials interfering with a nice view of the cathedral cupola

Standing on a bench to capture a better angle of the Pieta in the Cathedral museum

I also captured a couple of vignettes of interesting people who may or may not have been couples;

OK, back to the mainstream of the day. We visited lots of very attractive and photogenic places:

The Academy of Fine Arts (this is the exit – we didn’t go in)

The local equivalent of the UK’s Ordnance Survey…

…with its fetching observatory on the roof

The Piazza della Santissima Annunziata – the Annunziata Church is on the left; on the right a hospital for foundlings

Annunziata Square (2)

The Annunziata Square was recommended by the driver who picked us up at the airport yesterday; he described it as “cute”, which is not, I think, the right word.  It’s a handsome square all right, featuring a particular Florentine architectural characteristic – the pillars and arches. The pillars form a cube which is of a consistent dimension wherever it’s used; and the arches form a hemisphere above the cube. The cube’s exact dimensions are based on an exact number of standard “forearm” measurements, documented elsewhere in the city;

 

each “forearm” is 56.83cm in length. This, by the way, is longer than my forearm by quite some margin, so I have no idea how they arrived at 56.83cm as “normal”.

One can see from the square to the Duomo, which makes the scene a favourite for wedding photographs.

A less appealing feature of the Annunziata Square is this:

The cloths hanging there are are a reminder of the prevalence of domestic violence in Italy. Each cloth represents the death, through domestic violence, of one woman – this year!

Inside the entrance of the Annunziata Church is a splendid cloister.

around the walls of which are some lovely artworks.

Outside the church is an arch

which contains a corridor, built for a lady of the Medici family who was severely disabled so that she could get to services in the church without having to negotiate stairs or other difficulties.

The buildings in the environs of the cathedral featured wine cellars, which were somewhat below street level. It was A Thing to greet cellar workers and ask for a glass of wine, which could be delivered once money had changed hands. This practice gave rise to “wine windows”

whereby one knocked on the door to gain attention, and a glass of wine could be served directly. A little further along was a similar-looking niche

but one too small to accommodate a wine bottle. This one originally had a wire and a pulley to allow the lowering of a lamp so it could be lit before being hauled back into place.

We were by this time adjacent to the cathedral, and Bianca took us round the building, telling us about some of the background to the details. One of the world’s largest churches, with the dome still the largest masonry dome ever constructed, all but the dome was complete by 1380, with the dome itself completed in 1436.

The extraordinary external decoration, in polychrome marble, was begun in the 14th century but not completed until 1887!

In the triangle, the Virgin Mary is depicted in an almond shape called a “mandorla” which is a symbol of the intersection between the divine and the human

 

Shields in the facade representing the families who gave funds towards its creation

Panels on the campanile (bell tower) tell the story of the creation: God creating Adam and Eve, here

More campanile panels showing the development of civilisation – science, construction, medicine and so forth

The amount of symbolism among the detail of the decor of the cathedral and campanile is utterly extraordinary. It’s clear that it takes a lot of work to maintain it; a gang was at work with a specially-developed cherry-picker

examining every single piece of marble by tapping it to make sure it is secure.

Our next major stop was the Palazzo Vecchio – the old palace – but en route we passed a vendor of street food

Tripe sandwiches a speciality!

and a modern Florentine craftsman – not a worker in wood of stone, but in metal.

Penko is one of the world’s most skillful goldsmiths – his work in gold and silver is exquisite.

Jane and I had passed the Palazzo Vecchio yesterday, noting it as an impressive slab of masonry; but Bianca took us inside, to an astonishing interior:

The coat of arms you can see in the above is the Medici coat of arms, demonstrating the power and influence they had in the development of the city.

Near the Palazzo Vecchio is the Accademia Gallery, which famously houses Michaelangelo’s statue of David. We weren’t about to join the long queue to see the real thing, but luckily there’s a copy outside the Palazzo Vechio. Jane took a photo of his bum, but I preferred a less prurient view

The David was originally intended to be mounted high on the cathedral for people to gaze up at

yes, on the stone just peeking above the screening; getting the perspective right for this location is said to be why the proportions of David are not quite “right” (although his bum appears to be perfectly well-formed, I’m told). Nearby is the Loggia dei Lanzi, a sort of open air sculpture gallery;  the Perseus with the Medusa head by Benvenuto Cellini is a notable example.

Bianca then led us down towards the Ponte Vecchio, via another “Tree of Life” sculpture by Roggi

which was commissioned to commemorate those killed in a Mafia car-bombing outrage on this spot in 1993. Nearby, on the outside of a neighbouring building, is another sculpture in tribute to heroism as a reaction to the bombing.

You’ll have seen yesterday’s photos of Ponte Vecchio, of course you have, but Bianca pointed out something that actually in theory I knew about but which I hadn’t noticed: the Medici Corridor. This is an extraordinary construction which allowed Grand Duke Cosimo I de Medici  to make his way from Palazzo Vecchio to Pitti Palace (south of the river, remember) – without touching the ground or, perish the thought, being seen in public. It runs right through the upper floor of the Uffizi Gallery, crosses over the road via the arch you see here,

goes along the upper storey of the Ponte Vecchio

and round corners as necessary

to get to its destination – a distance of just under a kilometre. Interestingly, the construction of this corridor led to a major change in the usage of Ponte Vecchio, which was originally the site for butchers and tanners shops (using the river as a handy waste disposal) but this was too smelly for the Grand Duke, and so a law was passed – in force still today – to ensure that only jewellers may trade on Ponte Vecchio.

The Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge over the Arno to be spared by the wartime German bombing campaign. No-one knows exactly why; although they didn’t destroy the bridge itself they blocked access to it by bombing at each end, which explains the modern and ugly buildings to be seen close to either end of the bridge.

Bianca’s final offering was to take us to another church, still south of the river – Santa Felicita

which features in it an artwork depicting Christ being taken down from the cross.

It’s by Jacopo Pontormo, entitled The Deposition, an example of 16th century “Mannerist” style, which I invite you to look up for yourselves, By this stage, whilst being grateful for all the great things we’d seen and photographed, I found that my brain was full and my stomach was empty. So I for one was grateful when she left us at a recommended pizzeria, Casella 18, where we had a Nice Lunch. I recommend the Pizza Diavola (note the correct gendering here – British Diavolo pizzas have been misgendered for years).

Refreshed, we decided that we should attempt to get inside various parts of the cathedral complex, as we are gluttons for punishment as well as pizza. Amazingly, we managed to get tickets to go into the cathedral, the baptistry and the museum. We got them in a rather random fashion; looking for the ticket office, we stumbled across a helpful young lady who said that things were mainly sold out but the her colleague over there could sort us out a ticket for only 20 Euros each. Her colleague could indeed, but only for cash (which, remarkably, I had to hand). I thought at first that we were being conned, but no, it appeared to be legit.

Several astonishing moments then transpired: the enormous queues we had seen earlier evaporated; the fact that we were dressed in sandals was not, after all, a Dress Code Problem, and they didn’t mind me toting my penknife around with me inside any of these things. So we had a full house of cathedralness. First the main cathedral building, which is not, frankly, as awe-inspiring as one might have thought, given the outside, but it has some photogenic corners,

some nice marble flooring

with overtones of the almond shape,

some decent stained glass

and a wonderfully painted ceiling, a depiction of the Last Judgement, commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo, on the inside of the cupola.

Actually, there was far more of a “wow” factor in the next-door Baptistry of Saint John. The origins of this building lie in the 11th or 12th centuries, although the remains of a large structure dating from Roman times lie beneath it.

The outside, principally white marble and green-black serpentinite, is not as exciting as the cathedral; but the inside is very eye-catching. Regrettably, the mosaic ceiling was under maintentance, so one couldn’t see the whole thing, which apparently looks like this;

Completed between towards the end of the 12th century, the ten million tesserae form Byzantine-style depictions of the lives of Joseph, Mary, Christ and John the Baptist, and the Last Judgement. We could see portions of it

outside the scaffolding

and other details of the building were simply wonderful,

and the marble floor tiling was lovely.

Our final stop was in the museum, which Jane particularly wanted to visit in order to see the “Florentine Pieta”, the scupture of Christ being taken down from the cross originally made by Michelangelo to decorate his own tomb. But first we had to find it, which involved bumbling around all three floors of a very museum-like building,

a

occasionally taking note of details such as replicas of the Adam and Eve panels from the campanile

and various important doors,

and, in my case, being shouted at for crossing a rope to take a photo. In the end, all that climbing stairs was wasted, as the sculpture of Christ being taken from the cross by Nicodemus (whose face is considered to be a self-portrait), Mary and Mary Magdalene, was in a separate room on the ground floor, where I was admonished for standing on a bench to get a better angle. But here it is again

to round off a longish, satisfying and content-rich day. I apologise for the profusion of photos, but hope that, even if you got bored and skipped a few, you got an impression of the richness of art and architecture throughout the city. Since the plan is to visit the Uffizi Gallery tomorrow, there wil be even more, so brace yourselves!