Sights in Tuscany
-
A
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…
reviewed
-
B
Galleria dell'Accademia
A lengthy queue marks the door to this gallery, built especially to house one of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, Michelangelo's original David.
Fortunately, the most famous statue in the world is worth the long wait. The subtle detail (not quite as illuminated on copies) of the real thing - the veins in his sinewy arms, the muscles in his legs, the change in expression as you move around the statue - is impressive. Carved from a single block of marble already worked on by two sculptors before him (both of who gave up), Michelangelo's most famous work was also his most challenging - he didn't choose the marble himself, it was veined and its larger-than-life…
reviewed
-
C
Ponte Vecchio
The first documentation of a stone bridge here, at the narrowest crossing point along the entire length of the Arno, dates from 972. The Arno looks placid enough, but when it gets mean, it gets very mean. Floods in 1177 and 1333 destroyed the bridge, and in 1966 it came close to being destroyed again. Many of the jewellers with shops on the bridge were convinced the floodwaters would sweep away their livelihoods; however - fortunately - the bridge held.
They're still here. Indeed, the bridge has twinkled with the glittering wares of jewellers, their trade often passed down from generation to generation, ever since the 16th century, when Ferdinando I de' Medici ordered them…
reviewed
-
D
Duomo
Not only is Florence's duomo the city's most iconic landmark, it's also one of Italy's 'Big Three' (with Pisa's Leaning Tower and Rome's Colosseum). Its famous red-tiled dome, graceful campanile (bell tower) and breathtaking pink, white and green marble facade have the wow factor in spades.
Begun in 1296 by Sienese architect Arnolfo di Cambio, the cathedral took almost 150 years to complete. Its neo-Gothic facade was designed in the 19th century by architect Emilio de Fabris to replace the uncompleted original, torn down in the 16th century. The oldest and most clearly Gothic part of the cathedral is its south flank, pierced by Porta dei Canonici (Canons' Door), a…
reviewed
-
E
Palazzo Pitti
This vast palace was begun in 1458 for the Pitti family, rivals of the Medici. Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo acquired it in 1549 and it remained the official residence of Florence's rulers until 1919 when the Savoys gave it to the state.
The ground-floor Museo degli Argenti (Silver Museum) hosts temporary exhibitions in its elaborately frescoed audience chambers.
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 1st-floor Galleria Palatina . Highlights include Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child with Stories from the Life of St Anne (aka the Tondo Bartolini; 1452–53) and…
reviewed
-
F
Basilica di Santa Croce
When Lucy Honeychurch, the heroine of EM Forster's A Room With a View, is stranded in Santa Croce without a Baedeker, she first panics and then, looking around, wonders why it's thought to be such an important building. After all, doesn't it look just like a barn ('a black and white facade of surprising ugliness')?
On entering, many visitors to this massive Franciscan basilica share the same reaction. The austere interior can come as something of a shock after the magnificent neo-Gothic facade, which is enlivened by varying shades of coloured marble (both it and the campanile are 19th-century additions). The church itself was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio between 1294 and…
reviewed
-
G
Piazza della Signoria
Edged by historic cafes, crammed with Renaissance sculptures and presided over by the magnificent bulk of Palazzo Vecchio, this photogenic piazza is the hub of Florentine life, and has been so for centuries.
Whenever the city entered one of its innumerable political crises, the people would be called here as a parlamento (people's plebiscite) to rubber-stamp decisions that frequently meant ruin for some ruling families and victory for others. Scenes of great pomp and circumstance alternated with those of terrible suffering: it was here that vehemently pious preacher-leader Savonarola set fire to the city's art - books, paintings, musical instruments, mirrors, fine clothes…
reviewed
-
H
Cappelle Medicee
Nowhere is Medici conceit expressed so explicitly as in their mausoleum, the Medician Chapels. Sumptuously adorned with granite, the most precious marble, semiprecious stones and some of Michelangelo's most beautiful sculptures, it is the burial place of 49 members of the dynasty. Francesco I lies in the grandiose Cappella dei Principi (Princes' Chapel) alongside Ferdinando I and II and Cosimo I, II and III. Lorenzo il Magnifico is buried in the stark but graceful Sagrestia Nuova (New Sacristy), Michelangelo's first architectural work and showcase for three of his most haunting sculptures: Dawn and Dusk on the sarcophagus of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino; Night and Day on the…
reviewed
-
I
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…
reviewed
-
J
Collegiata
San Gimignano's Romanesque cathedral, officially titled the Duomo Collegiata o Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta but commonly known as the Collegiata (referring to the college of priests who originally managed it), has a bare facade that belies the remarkably vivid frescoes inside.
Parts of the building date back to the second half of the 11th century, but the frescoes, which resemble a vast medieval comic strip, date from the 14th century. Entry is via the side stairs and through a loggia that was originally covered and functioned as the baptistry.
Facing the altar, along the left (north) wall, are scenes from Genesis and the Old Testament by Bartolo di Fredi, dating from…
reviewed
Advertisement
-
K
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…
reviewed
-
L
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…
reviewed
-
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…
reviewed
-
M
Museo del Bargello
It was behind the stark exterior of Palazzo del Bargello, Florence's earliest public building, that the podestà meted out justice from the late 13th century until 1502. Today the building safeguards Italy's most comprehensive collection of Tuscan Renaissance pieces and some of Michelangelo's best early works.
Michelangelo was just 21 when a cardinal commissioned him to create the drunken grape-adorned Bacchus (1496-97) displayed in Bargello's downstairs Sala di Michelangelo. Unfortunately the cardinal didn't like the result and sold it to a banker. Other Michelangelo works to look out for here include the marble bust of Brutus (c 1539-40), the David/Apollo from 1530-32…
reviewed
-
N
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…
reviewed
-
O
Basilica di San Lorenzo
In 1425 Cosimo the Elder, who lived nearby, commissioned Brunelleschi to rebuild the basilica on this site, which dated to the 4th century. The new building would become the Medici parish church and mausoleum - many members of the family are buried here. Considered one of the most harmonious examples of Renaissance architecture, the basilica has never been finished - Michelangelo was commissioned to design the facade in 1518 but his design in white Carrara marble was never executed, hence the building's rough unfinished appearance.
In the austere interior, columns of pietra serena (soft grey stone) crowned with Corinthian capitals separate the nave from the two aisles.…
reviewed
-
P
Basilica di Santa Maria Novella
Just south of the central train station, Stazione di Santa Maria Novella, this church was begun in the mid-13th century as the Dominican order's Florentine base. Although it was mostly completed by 1360, work on the facade and embellishment of the interior continued well into the 15th century.
The lower section of the green-and-white marble facade is transitional from Romanesque to Gothic, while the upper section and the main doorway were designed by Leon Battista Alberti and completed between 1456 and 1470.
The interior is full of artistic masterpieces. As you enter, look straight ahead and you will see Masaccio's superb fresco Trinity (1424-25), one of the first artworks…
reviewed
-
Q
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,…
reviewed
-
R
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…
reviewed
-
S
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…
reviewed
Advertisement
-
T
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…
reviewed
-
U
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…
reviewed
-
V
Museo dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore
Surprisingly overlooked by the crowds, this museum on the northern (street) side of the cathedral safeguards treasures that once adorned the duomo, Baptistry and campanile. It is one of the city's most impressive museums.
Make a beeline for the glass-topped courtyard with its awe-inspiring display of seven of the original 10 panels from Ghiberti's glorious masterpiece the Porta del Paradiso (Door of Paradise), designed for the Baptistry.
The nearby large room is devoted to statuary from Arnolfo di Cambio's original never-to-be-completed Gothic facade. Pieces include several by Arnolfo - Pope Boniface VIII, The Virgin and Child (with its somewhat strange glass eyes) and …
reviewed
-
W
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…
reviewed
-
X
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…
reviewed