Our European Holiday Day 5 - Fun in Florence

Today was another great day in Florence! Eric did a great job of researching Florence, so he knew the lines at the Uffizi Gallery could get very long. He arranged tickets for us to get into the museum between 8:15 and 8:30, right when it opened. We made it to the Uffizi a little before 8:00, picked up our tickets, and were among the first in the museum. Between our tours and planning, we avoided standing in every single long line we saw. Once we got into the museum, we raced straight to the Botticelli Gallery to see The Birth of Venus. This painting was the cover of one of my Art History textbooks in college and I’ve always loved it. It’s an early Renaissance piece, with the perfect composition. Renaissance Art is my favorite art period.  We had a few minutes to ourselves with Venus and then we headed back to the beginning of the museum to see it as it’s meant to be viewed; in chronological order.

The first galleries were Medieval Art, so we quickly went through those because neither of us particularly care for Medieval Art. We spent a lot of time in the Renaissance galleries admiring the works by Rafael, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and even a rare painting by Michelangelo. I absolutely loved spending time in the Renaissance section. One of my favorite characteristics of Renaissance painting is the colors – they are bright and lovely. Renaissance art strove for peaceful composition, so the colors complement each other well.  Additionally, landscapes are frequently seen in the back of all Renaissance paintings, adding to their beauty. One of my favorites was one of Rafael’s Madonna’s. He painted several, and this was the only one at the Uffizi. I love how he makes Jesus look like a baby and Mary like an adoring mother. And of course, the colors complement each other perfectly.

We spent most of the morning at the Uffizi and then went and found lunch at the Centrale Mercado, the same place as yesterday. Today we opted to get one pizza and one pasta dish and share them. They were both delicious. The Central Market is set up like a food court with many different options to choose from and on the bottom floor, there is an actual market where you can purchase meat, pasta, vegetables, and all sorts of other food items. This was one of my favorite places we visited. Eric commented that markets like this are just part of the human experience. You can find them anywhere. Just this year, we have visited markets like this in Seattle, China, and now Italy.

After lunch, we wandered over to the Medici Chapels. We knew Michelangelo had a few statues here and we wanted to see them. However, we didn’t realize there are two separate chapels, each with a fee. Unfortunately by the time, we realized we were in the wrong chapel, we had already paid the fee. This church was pretty, but nothing really special. It was designed by Brunelleschi, so even though it had a Gothic floor plan, there weren’t pointed arches or stained glass. I prefer this much more to a Gothic Church.

We found the second chapel around the corner and it still took us a few minutes to locate the Michelangelo sculptures. We ended up trying to find guidance online and learned that Michelangelo did more than just the sculptures, he also architected the chapel. It’s very small, but beautiful. The chapel was designed as a burial place for several members of the Medici family. Michelangelo sculpted 4 statues, one for each member of this particular family grouping. However, two died before the sculptures were complete and then Michelangelo was called to Rome and was unable to complete the chapel. He did mostly finish the four statues though, and they are on top of two of the sarcophagi. One side has Day and Night. The other has Dawn and Dusk. It was interesting to see that there were still some elements of the statues unfinished, like the faces. They weren’t as polished and clean as the David we saw yesterday.

Additionally, Michelangelo sculpted a Madonna for the chapel. This one is also beautiful, but still not fully finished. There is still some rough stone around baby Jesus. It looks like he could just wiggle free of it. Michelangelo has a way of making his sculptures appear like they are living, breathing figures who are breaking free of their stone casings.

After the chapel, we headed to our favorite Gelato place. Eric tried a new flavor that had some sort of cheese in it. It kind of tasted like cheesecake. It was really good! I had half strawberry and half cream. It was delicious. I typically don’t even like strawberry ice cream because it tastes like artificial flavoring, but this tasted fresh and flavorful. I was in heaven!

After gelato, we decided to climb the Duomo bell tower. It is approximately 450 steps to the top. The nice thing about this climb is there were periodic breaks in the bell tower where air flowed naturally and we had a nice breeze. It made the climb much more comfortable. The views from the top were of course, beautiful! We were glad we did the climb.

Our next stop was the Galileo Museum. This is a museum dedicated to science. Florence was a hub for all things Renaissance, whether it was art, music, literature, or science. Galileo spent a lot of time in Florence and many of his instruments were displayed. The whole museum was ancient scientific instruments used to tell time, draw maps, or even show complications with childbirth. It was a fascinating museum. We spent about an hour there before heading back out in the heat.

By this time we didn’t have a lot of time left in Florence, so we wandered around and eventually made our way back to the Duomo. It’s such a beautiful church, we found ourselves here quite a lot in the last few days. We decided to try to find a park just a little outside the city, but couldn’t find the entrance we were hungry and out of time. We found a nice little place for dinner. Eric had ravioli and I had risotto. They were both delicious. After dinner, we headed back to Duomo to say goodbye to it one more time and ran into 4 missionaries. We chatted with them for a minute and found out 2 of them were heading home tomorrow. It was fun to visit with them.  By then it was time to say goodbye, so we headed back to our hotel, got our bags, and headed to the train station to catch a train to Venice!