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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.

Camino Rest Day 3 – León

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Sunday 10 September 2023 – As you will have read (you will have, won’t you? Good!), we arrived here yesterday. Walking through the city to our hotel gave us a chance at some of the sights. Since our hotel room was available and a Nice Lunch was forthcoming there, we needed a walk afterwards, and we also went out during the evening to see if any of the sights looked nice lit up. Today we took another walk around, so we’ve covered a few miles and seen quite a lot of what the city has to offer,  It’s-a nice-a place – the centre is very handsome and has such a cosmopolitan feel that I actually found it difficult on occasions to remember that I was in Spain.

This post is going to be mainly just a selection of the photos I took, and most of them are of the many religious buildings that litter the place.  If you’re content with that, please read on….

The City

León has a long history, having been founded as the military encampment of the Roman Legio VI Victrix around 29 BC. So the city’s name comes from the latin for Legion, and not from Lion, although you’d never guess from the number of Lion statues around the place

The lion has also been adopted as a local emblem for the Camino

though this is apparently not popular and I’ve heard some of these signs even feature bullet holes. I’m not surprised; it’s a rubbish idea, and demeans the Camino, the animal and the City all at once.

In 1188, the city hosted the first Parliament in European history under the reign of Alfonso IX, and this is why it was acknowledged as the “cradle of Parliamentarism”. Now, the Icelanders might have a thing or two to say about that, since the Althingi, established in 930 AD, is often regarded as the world’s oldest extant parliamentary institution. However, it’s essential to note that it was a very different kind of assembly from modern parliaments, being an outdoor gathering of chieftains, rather than a systematic process of representation from local burghers as well as noblemen and clergy. The city’s prominence began to decline in the early Middle Ages, partly due to the loss of independence after the union of the Leonese kingdom with the Crown of Castile, consolidated in 1301. This still rankles with the locals; all over the place you can find signposts where the “Castilla y” part of “Castilla y León” has been black spray painted over. The signpost above is one of the few I saw where this had not happened.

After a period of stagnation during the early modern age, it was one of the first cities to hold an uprising in the Spanish War of Independence, and some years later, in 1833, acquired the status of provincial capital.  This chequered but consequential history goes a long way to explain why it is such an important city.

Religious buildings

Apart from the cathedral, there are many churches and other religious buildings across the city.  Our hotel, the Hotel Real Colegiata San Isidoro, is part of the fabric of the Basilica of San Isidoro, which has a striking interior.

and also features a museum.   I took some unofficial photos in the museum.

Some of the books date from the 16th century

In the Pantheon part, they actually police the prohibition of taking photos, so I was reduced to buying a couple showing the Pantheon and some of the mural painting that has survived nearly a thousand years.

The Basilica has some lovely cloisters.

Somewhat away from the old town is the Convento de San Marcos, which has a splendid portico

and much of which is now a parador hotel (featured in the “The Way” film, apparently.

And of course, there is the cathedral.

In the 100 years after the Moors were defeated, 200 Christian cathedrals were built over Iberia. The three largest are Toledo, Burgos and, yes, León. It gives less of its interior over to the vast number of chapels that there are in the Burgos cathedral, so the inside space feels much larger.

It’s difficult to realise from the outside, but inside is one of the largest arrays of stained glass anywhere.

The choir is exquisitely carved.

The stained glass is so famous that people even use it as a garage door decoration.

The cathedral also has very grand cloisters.

There are, of course, other churches, such as the Iglesia de Santa María del Camino o del Mercado, on Plaza del Grano.

Thinking of which, there are lots of plazas, such as del Grano,

several smaller ones, inevitably with a selection of bars and restaurants,

the main one, of course, being the Plaza Mayor.

The plazas tend to feature buildings with cloisters or galleries under building overhangs,

All around the place you find statuary

The above is on a plaza outside a building designed by the famous Antoni Gaudi, whose buildings contribute to the unique feel of Barcelona. This one, by comparison is somewhat muted,

but still features an extravagant entrance.

There are other lovely architectural settings, too numerous to articulate in full.

but the tout ensemble makes the old town a very pleasant place to wander about. As we did so, it was nice to bump into some of our “Camino Family” – Molly and Mike from Minnesota, and Petra and Tom from Kõln. In the evenings, some places are lit up. This makes the cathedral even more impressive, for example.

and the shopping streets, which feature innumerable bars and restaurants, have a wonderful buzz about them.

Mind you, occasionally things take a slightly more rowdy turn, such as when we came across this bachelor party celebration in one of those plazas.

León has provided a wonderful break from walking the Camino, but we have to get back on it tomorrow.  We will retrace our steps to the convent and cross the Roman San Marcos bridge

as we make our way towards Villar del Mazerife, about 23km away – a medium-distance walk which we hope will get us back into the swing of progressing along The Way. We’re hoping for decent weather, of course, as we start this next segment of the Camino. Do please keep in touch so you can find out how it all works out, eh?