Sights in Tuscany
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Galleria degli Uffizi
Reason enough to come to Florence, this fabled museum contains quite simply the world’s finest collection of Renaissance art, including both 12th- to 14th-century forebears and 16th- and 17th-century inheritors. Its 50-plus rooms are crammed with more than 1500 works, nearly all of them masterpieces. Part of the museum’s mystique is the difficulties it presents: long lines, crowded galleries, a daunting combination of quantity and quality. There are two tricks to enjoying your experience: pre-book tickets and concentrate on select artists or periods. While signage is less than satisfying, the museum is laid out chronologically, and largely over a single floor. For a menta…
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Galleria dell’Accademia
A lengthy queue marks the otherwise inauspicious entrance to this museum, built especially to hold a single masterpiece, Michelangelo’s David. The collection now encompasses works by Botticelli and Taddeo Gaddi, a fine group of Russian icons, and several rooms of 14th-century paintings, including a remarkable embroidered Coronazione della Vergine (Coronation of the Virgin). However, it’s David everyone’s hot for – and for good reason. The subtle detail – the veins in his sinewy arms, the muscles that seem to ripple under his marble skin, the change in expression as you move around the statue – is impressive. Michelangelo was also the master behind the unfinish…
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Ponte Vecchio
This famous bridge has twinkled with the glittering wares of jewellers ever since the 16th century, when Ferdinando I de’ Medici ordered them here to replace the often malodorous presence of the town butchers, who were wont to toss unwanted leftovers into the river.
The bridge as it stands was built in 1345 and was the only one in Florence saved from destruction by the retreating Germans in 1944. Look above the shops on the eastern side and you will see the Corridoio Vasariano, an elevated covered passageway joining the Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti that was designed by Vasari for Cosimo I in 1565. Its original design incorporated small windows to ensure t…
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Duomo
Begun in 1296 by Sienese architect Arnolfo di Cambio, the world’s fourth-largest cathedral took almost 150 years to complete. Behind the Gothic welter of its white, green and red marble facade (actually a 19th-century re-creation), the interior of the city’s cathedral is surprisingly Spartan, as most of its treasures have been moved to the adjacent Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. However, the vast and soaring space still houses masterpieces such as Uccello’s portrait of Sir John Hawkwood and Michelino’s fresco Dante e I Suoi Mondi (Dante and His Worlds). The gorgeously geometric marble paving is best appreciated when climbing up to Brunelleschi’s cupola del duomo …
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Palazzo Pitti
Begun in 1458 for the Pitti family, rivals of the Medici, the original nucleus of this palace took up the space encompassing the seven sets of windows on the 2nd and 3rd storeys. Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo acquired the palace in 1549 and it remained the official residence of Florence’s rulers until 1919, when the Savoys handed it over to the state.
The ground-floor Museo degli Argenti often has no silver on display. Go figure. Come instead to see the elaborately frescoed audience chambers, which host temporary exhibitions.
Raphaels and Rubens vie for centre stage in the enviable collection of 16th- to 18th-century art amassed by the Medici and Lorraine dukes in the…
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Basilica di Santa Croce
Behind an opulent candy-coloured facade (actually a 19th-century neo-Gothic addition), the nave of this Gothic church, built between 1294 and 1385, is surprisingly austere. EM Forster described the interior as ‘barnlike’, because of the timber, A-frame–style ceiling and general lack of finery. But lurking in the transept is a series of chapels brightly decked out with masterly fresco cycles. Unfortunately, only parts of Giotto’s cycle depicting the life of St Francis survive. Those by his loyal pupil Taddeo Gaddi are in much better shape, as are Taddi’s Last Supper in the refectory – considered his masterpiece – and his Crucifixion in the sacristy. The basil…
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Piazza della Signoria
A massive holding tank for tourists (if you want space, bring a bicycle bell), the city's most splendid piazza was created virtually by accident in the 13th century and - lined with replicas of famous sculptures and historical buildings - has been the hub of Florentine political life ever since.
In times of political crises, the public would be summoned here for popular votes, which usually decided the fates of conflicting families and frequently descended into frenzied riots. Emotions would be stirred up by political speeches delivered from an arringhiera (oration platform) in front of Palazzo Vecchio, from where we get the word 'harangue'.
Nowadays it's predominantly to…
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Cappelle Medicee
Nowhere is Medici conceit expressed so explicitly as in their mausoleum. The soaring and rather overblown main chapel is sumptuously adorned in baroque style with granite, marble and semi-precious stones. From here a corridor leads to the stark Sagrestia Nuova (New Sacristy), Michelangelo’s first architectural work and showcase for three of his most haunting sculptures. Aurora e Crepusculo (Dawn and Dusk) lounges on the sarcophagus of the unpopular Lorenzo Duke of Urbino (1492–1519), to whom Machiavelli dedicated The Prince. Notte e Giorno (Night and Day) marks the spot opposite where a son of Lorenzo il Magnifico is buried. The unfinished tomb of Lorenzo il Magnifico…
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Duomo Nuovo
In 1339 the city's leaders launched a plan to enlarge the cathedral and create one of Italy's largest places of worship. Known as the Duomo Nuovo, the remains of this unrealised project are on Piazza Jacopo della Quercia, at the eastern side of the main cathedral. The daring plan, to build an immense new nave with the present cathedral becoming the transept, was scotched by the plague of 1348.
The cathedral's interior is truly stunning. Walls and pillars continue the black-and-white-stripe theme of the exterior, while the vaults are painted blue with gold stars. High along the walls of the nave is a long series of papal busts. After looking up, look down…and you'll see th…
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Collegiata
The 13th-century Palazzo del Podestà and its tower, the Torre della Rognosa, look across to the town’s Romanesque basilica. Access is up a flight of steps. Its bare facade belies the remarkable 14th-century frescoes that stripe the interior walls like a vast medieval comic strip.
Along the northern aisle are frescoes of key moments from the Old Testament by Bartolo di Fredi. Opposite, covering the walls of the south aisle, the school of Simone Martini illustrates New Testament scenes. On the inside wall of the facade, extending onto adjoining walls, Taddeo di Bartolo probably scared the daylights out of pious locals with his gruesome depiction of the Last Judgment. The…
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Giardino di Boboli
Despite the volumes of visitors and a slightly shop-worn mien, the Boboli gardens remain both a marvel of Tuscan Renaissance landscape architecture and, in its further reaches, a fine escape from the tourist hordes. Perhaps its most impressive feature is the stately VialedeiCipressi, a grand, cypress-lined avenue that leads down to Isolotto, a marvellous ornamental pond adorned with a marble Neptune and nymphs and, in warmer weather, fragrant citrus trees. Nearer the Palazzo Pitti, a fleshy Venus by Giambologna rises from the waves in the Grotta del Buontalenti, a fanciful grotto designed by the eponymous artist. Don’t miss the haunting ‘face’ sculpture (1998) by Polish s…
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Certosa di Galluzzo
Dominating the village of Galluzzo, about 3km south along Via Senese from Porta Romana, is this quite remarkable 14th-century monastery. The Carthusian order of monks once had 50 monasteries in Italy. Of these, only two are now inhabited by monks of that order. The Certosa passed into Cistercian hands in 1955.
The Certosa can only be visited with a guide (reckon on about 45 minutes) who will take you first to the Gothic hall of the Palazzo degli Studi, now graced by a small collection of art, including five somewhat weathered frescoes by Pontormo. It is a little depressing to think that, until Napoleon's troops looted the place in the early 19th century, more than 500 imp…
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Parco Nazionale dell'Arcipelago Toscan
According to local legend, when Venus rose from the waves, seven precious stones fell from her tiara, creating seven islands off the Tuscan coast. They range from the 530 sq km of Elba, the largest, to tiny Montecristo, at just over 1000 hectares. All except Montecristo, nowadays a closed marine biological reserve, rely mainly on income from tourism. This national park was established in 1996 to protect the delicate ecosystems of the islands.
But it's not only the land that's protected - the 60,000 hectares of sea that washes around the islands make up Europe's largest marine protected area. Here, typical Mediterranean fish abound and rare species, such as the wonderfully…
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Museo del Bargello
Crowds clamour to see David, but few rush to Michelangelo’s early works in the Bargello. The artist was just 22 when a cardinal commissioned him to create the drunken Bacchus displayed in the ground-floor hall. His large roundel of the Madonna and Child with the infant St John, known as Tondo Pitti, portrays the halo-bare pair in a very human light. However, the collection’s most illustrious member is another David. Donatello’s bronze version from the 1440s, the first freestanding nude to be sculpted since classical times, is elegant and slenderly androgynous – a curious contrast from Michelangelo’s he-man version. These are just a few highlights of an extraordinary c…
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Ponte Alle Grazie
In 1237, Giovanni Villani tells us, Messer Rubaconte da Mandella, a Milanese then serving as external martial (podestà) in Florence, had this bridge built. It was swept away in 1333 and on its replacement were raised chapels, one of them dubbed Madonna alle Grazie (Our Lady of the Graces), from which the bridge then took its name.
Eventually the chapel, at one end of the bridge, was expanded into a small convent whose Benedictine nuns lived in isolation. Their food was passed to them through a small window and so the nuns became known as Le Murate (The Walled-in Ones). In 1424 they left for larger premises on Via dell'Agnolo, which took on their name, Le Murate. Much lat…
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Basilica di San Lorenzo
Founded in the late 4th-century, San Lorenzo lays claim to being the oldest church in Florence and once served as its cathedral. The current incarnation dates to the 1420s, when the Medici hired Brunelleschi to spruce up their parish church. The facade may look like a pile of rough-cut stones, but it belies the extraordinary, light-filled interior. The harmonious geometry, quantities of natural light and classical Corinthian columns of pietra serena (soft grey stone) were unlike anything in Christendom. Michelangelo was commissioned to design the facade in 1518, though it was never executed; hence its unfinished appearance. Donatello, who sculpted the church’s two bronze …
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Basilica di Santa Maria Novella
The flesh and bones of this Dominican church, completed in 1346, may be medieval, but the finishing touches include some of the most seminal works of the Renaissance. Leon Battista Alberti’s super-refined facade influenced generations of church architects with its classic motives and balanced geometry. Inside, Masaccio’s fresco Trínita (Trinity, 1427), on the nave’s left flank, is considered the first Renaissance painting, with its distinctly Roman setting and almost perfectly realised, three-dimensional perspective. Note the ominous words of the fresco’s skeleton, which translate as ‘I was as you are, and you will become as I am.’ Its fresco cycles – in particular F…
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Sinagoga e Museo di Storia e Arte Ebraica
This late-19th-century synagogue is a fanciful structure with playful Moorish and even Byzantine elements. Although Florence was home to a Jewish community since at least the 14th century, serious discussion on the building of an appropriate temple only began around 1850, after the town authorities had definitively dropped all discriminatory regulations against the Jews.
The playfulness of the exterior of the synagogue that resulted is matched inside by the prayer hall, sumptuously (if a little gloomily) decorated with Arabesques and held together by Moorish-style arches. Up on the top floor is the small museum. You can see Jewish ceremonial objects and some old codices,…
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Porta Romana
Pilgrims to Rome headed down Via Romana leaving Florence behind them. The end of the road is marked by the Porta Romana, an imposing gate that was part of the outer circle of city walls knocked down in the 19th century. A strip of this wall still stretches to the north from the gate.
If you head along the inside of this wall (the area is now a car park), you will find an entrance that allows you to get to the top of the Porta Romana. The square below was traditionally a fairground for peasants in the surrounding county (contado). By far the most curious of these fairs was the Fiera dei Contratti (Contracts Fair), when country folk from near and far dragged sons and daugh…
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Cemetery
Soil shipped from Calvary during the Crusades - and reputed to reduce cadavers to skeletons within days - is said to lie within the white walls of this hauntingly beautiful cemetery, a beautiful final resting place for many prominent Pisans, arranged around a garden in a cloistered quadrangle. Many of the more interesting sarcophagi are of Greco-Roman origin, recycled in the Middle Ages.
During WWII, Allied artillery destroyed many of the cloisters' precious frescoes. Among the few to survive was the Triumph of Death - a remarkable illustration of Hell - attributed to an anonymous 14th-century painter known as 'The Master of the Triumph of Death'. Fortunately, the mirrors…
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Museo/Chiesa di San Marco
Endowed generously by Cosimo il Vecchio, this former Dominican monastery was an important font of early Renaissance art thanks mostly to its most famous resident, Fra Angelico. The attention to perspective and realistic portrayal of nature have lead critics to call Fra Angelico’s Deposizione di Cristo (Deposition of Christ; 1432) one of the first true paintings of the Renaissance. Fra Angelico was commissioned to produce this painting only because the original painter died. The early-Renaissance architecture of Michelozzo, especially his Chiostro di Sant’Antonio (1440), is also impressive. However, it is the monks’ cells that are most haunting. At the top of the stairs …
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Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore
Dominating the Florence skyline is the russet-domed Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, with its furiously pretty façade in pink, white and green marble. Begun in 1296 by Arnolfo di Cambio, the world’s fourth-largest cathedral took almost 150 years to complete. The restrained interior is a surprise after the tumultuous decoration of the façade. It’s also surprisingly secular in places (a sizeable chunk of the cathedral was not paid for by the church). It’s a must to scale the 463 steps to the Brunelleschi-designed dome for unforgettable panoramas, and you can also climb the Giotto-designed, 82m campanile (8.30am-7.30pm). The 11th-century Romanesque baptistry has …
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Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Light, airy and surprisingly overlooked by the crowds, the Cathedral Museum, behind the cathedral, safeguards works that once adorned the Duomo, Battistero and campanile. The museum begins with a history of the Duomo told in the best English-language signage in Florence. Under the glass-topped courtyard you’ll find the original version of Ghiberti’s awe-inspiring masterpiece – the Porta del Paradiso (Doors of Paradise). Designed for the Battistero, the doors took 27 painstaking years to complete and are considered a seminal work of the early Renaissance for their naturalism and innovative use of perspective. Other masterworks in the museum include Michelangelo’s P…
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Parco delle Cascine
Florence's largest park is dotted with playgrounds and is a great place to let the little 'uns loose. Families take over at weekends and the park is a colourful scene with rollerbladers, kite-flyers, joggers and kids on bikes. In summer you can also use Le Pavoniere swimming pool.
The Medici dukes made this a private hunting reserve, but Peter Leopold opened it to the public in 1776, with boulevards, fountains and bird sanctuaries (now the swimming pool). In the late 19th century horse racing began here. Queen Victoria was a fan of Florence and would toddle along to the Cascine during her stays.
At the extreme west end of the park is a monument to Rajaram Cuttiputti, an I…
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Duomo
Pisa's duomo was paid for with spoils brought home after Pisans attacked an Arab fleet entering Palermo in 1063. Begun a year later, the cathedral, with its striking cladding of alternating bands of green and cream marble, became the blueprint floor for Romanesque churches throughout Tuscany. The elliptical dome, the first of its kind in Europe at the time, was added in 1380.
It is the three pairs of firmly closed, 16th-century bronze doors of the main entrance (west), designed by the school of Giambologna to replace the wooden originals destroyed (along with most of the cathedral interior) by fire in 1596, which the crowds ogle over. Quite spellbinding, hours can be spen…
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