Day 5 - Statues and Sunshine!!

Day 5 was the best day of the trip for me. Hands down. I was in Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, I got to see some AMAZING pieces of art that I've been DYING to see forever, and IT WAS WARM!! We didn't actually know how warm it was going to be. We had breakfast in our little bed and breakfast place, then layered up and headed outside. We were about halfway down the block when we realized that we were HOT. Yep, you heard me. HOT! We went back to our place and took off some of our layers and headed back out for the day. 7:30 in the morning and feeling hot?? Sounds like a winner of a day to me!

We started our early morning by walking to the Duomo and the close-by baptistery. This little place alone had two major masterpieces that pretty much started the Renaissance. The first are the doors to the baptistery, here.

Well, actually not here. These are the fake ones. The real ones are the Duomo Museum that we went to a bit later. But, the city of Florence had a kind of contest to see who could design the greatest doors to the baptistery, and Ghiberti designed these doors and won. He made the arches in the pictures recede into the distance to create an illusion of a three-dimensional scene. He used a vanishing point and a horizon line. This is a very realistic 3-D scene on a 2-D surface -something Florence, or anywhere in the world really, had seen much of before. And by the way, he was 25 when he designed these. !!!

This is the other masterpiece that kicked off the Renaissance. The people of Florence built this church intending it to have a dome on the top, but they didn't know anybody who could design the right dome to fit the church. That didn't stop them from building it anyway. They built the church and left it with a giant hole in the roof, hoping that somebody would come along someday who knew how to cap it with a dome. Enter Brunelleschi. He had just gotten back from a trip to Rome where he measured and studied the dome of the Pantheon. He convinced the town officials that he could cap it, and cap it he did. This dome inspired even Michelangelo to build the dome on St. Peter's. Michelangelo is famous for saying, "I will make it's sister (talking about the dome in the Vatican) bigger, but not more beautiful." This dome was the wonder of its age, and inspired many great artists.

Good morning from Florence!

Some people call this church the church in pajamas, because it looks kind of like it's wearing pajamas. Some people think it's overdone and too "busy". I loved it. Way way way way way more than I thought I would. It was absolutely beautiful, and I was just staring at it forever trying to soak it all in. 

The inside of the Duomo didn't open for a few more hours, so we headed over to the Duomo Museum, just behind the Duomo to see some GREAT pieces of art. There was NOBODY in the museum. We had it literally all to ourselves. We didn't see a single other person. It was awesome. We could actually take pictures in here too, so here's a few of what we saw.

We actually have no idea what this is, but if this picture doesn't make you laugh your head off, I don't know what will. I laugh so hard I cry every single time I see it. 

Another of Michelangelo's Pieta's. This one was done later in his life. The "z" shape of Christ's body really accentuates his dead weight. The face of Nicodemus, at the very top of the pyramid is a self-portrait of the aging Michelangelo. This was incredible to see in real life. Again, much cooler than I had even anticipated.

A close up of Nicodemus/Michelangelo

Here is Mary Magdalene by Donatello. Are you starting to recognize the horrifying realism he loved so much? 

Kind of scary, huh?? Scary, but awesome!!

These doors are the real deal. Each panel depicts a different scene from the bible. I sat and studied each panel for what seemed like forever. It was just so exciting to see what some people argue really started the Renaissance. I got to see it!!

After the museum, the Duomo was open to the public. We walked in and it was surprisingly plain. For all of the extravagance of the outside, the inside feels kind of boring, even.

Inside the Duomo

The inside of Brunelleschi's dome. He didn't actually paint these pictures - we're not sure who did.

After the duomo, we went to the Bargello Museum, which really only had one piece of work we were hoping to see, Donatello's David. It was kind of a bummer to pay so much money to see one little piece of art, but it was totally worth it. We couldn't take pictures inside the museum, so here's what it looked like.

Are you surprised that this David isn't haggard and scary? That's because this was carved much earlier in his life. This David was so influential because it was the first free standing male nude carved for thousands of years. Art had always been used to teach the uneducated masses about religion and the human body was viewed as something was sinful and needed to be covered up. Donatello changed that with this sculpture. David wasn't carved for a church - he was carved for the Medici's (the ruling family of Florence) palace, and it was the first time that art was made to simply be beautiful instead of teach a lesson. People think this statue wasn't really intended even to portray the story of David and Goliath, but to showcase the beauty of the human body. 

So yeah, it was worth it to pay the money to see this statue. It's kind of a big deal.

In the courtyard of the Bargello. This used to be a prison.

The Bargello

After the Bargello, we headed to Santa Croce church. It was another church that we had to see because there are so many famous Florentines buried there, and a few other cool things to see.

Here's a video of the church and the adjoining square, plus the story of the cute little Chinese girl that approached us. She was great. 

Here's the outside of the church. I was surprised that it looked a lot like the facade of the Duomo. Beautiful.

 Umm....I'm warming my hands on the little candle prayers. Probably not really appropriate, but those churches were SO cold!!

Galileo's tomb

Michelangelo's tomb. Cool to think that his bones are in there.

A bust of Michelangelo on top of his tomb.

So Dave is really into the Dan Brown books, and he's researched the next one that's coming out. Dan Brown is writing about Florence and Dave found out that it has something to do with Dante. Neither of us knew much about him, but we thought that the book would probably have some reference to his tomb, so we had to get a picture by it.

Machiavelli's tomb

This is a fresco in the church by Giotto. It's one of the first expressions of human emotion in modern painting. It is of the Death of St. Francis, and you can see how emotional people are about his death.

Speaking of St. Francis, this is a piece of his tunic. We're talking clothes from a man from 1200 A.D. That's OLD!!

After the Santa Croce church, we headed back to the Duomo area so we could go inside the baptistery. We would have gone earlier, but it didn't open until 12:00. Talk about weird hours of operation.

One of the many, many charming streets of Florence.

The baptistery ended up being one of my favorite stops. It was so surprisingly awesome. That's kind of how my entire day in Florence was. I kept being so pleasantly surprised at how wonderful everything was. When the Duomo was built, it was so sacred and holy that you could only enter it after you'd been baptized. That's why the baptistery is a completely separate building. The mosaics on the ceiling were incredible, and we just sat on the benches inside and craned our necks for as long as could taking in the scenes depicted. Here are some shots of our favorite scenes.

Here is Christ in the middle, which is what your eye goes straight to as soon as you walk into the baptistery. Christ is giving what Rick Steves kept calling, "the ultimate thumbs up/thumbs down". 

Here are the people on Jesus' right hand. You'll see that they are literally "in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob". On the bottom left you see people sitting on the laps of three men. Those are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They look very happy and serene. On the other hand....

Here are the scenes from Jesus' left hand. There is a demon/monster eating the naked sinners who are doomed to eternal damnation. I guess seeing that right after you come out of the baptismal font would pretty much convince you to do whatever it takes to stay on Jesus' right hand, right? That was at least the hope of the artist. We had a pretty good laugh about it for awhile.

We also laughed at the differing depictions of Jesus' baptism. Here (bottom left) you'll see Jesus is being baptized by immersion, and on the outside of the baptistery, Ghiberti's doors depicted Jesus being baptized by just a sprinkling of water poured on his head. Well, which is it? You'd think that the baptistery, of all places, would have the same kind of baptism depicted. I guess there was confusion back in the day. :)

Isn't that ceiling something else?? I was amazed.

Cool shot of the Duomo

After the Duomo, it was lunchtime and we had found a place in our Rick Steves book that we were pretty excited about. It was called the Leonardo Express, and it was a self-serve cafeteria. It was the cheapest meal we ate on the trip, but not the worst. Not in the least. It was actually delicious. Like, really, really yummy. We wished we would have found it sooner so that we could have eaten there more than once. They had delicious food PLUS, free water from the tap in a giant pitcher for every table. Nobody - anywhere - offers that in Europe. It's always bottled water and always expensive. We loved this place.

YUM!!

I just couldn't get enough of this Duomo. I LOVED IT!!!

After lunch, we stopped for a quick gelato (hazlenut and vanilla) and then we were ready to hit up the biggest museum of the trip. The Uffizi Gallery. I could not WAIT to go there because my favorite, favorite, favorite painting of all time is in there - Botticelli's Birth of Venus. That piece was what I was most anticipating out of anything on our entire Italy trip. And let me tell you what, it didn't let me down.

The Uffizi Gallery had so many pieces of art, and we couldn't take any pictures which was a bummer. I'm only going to talk about the Birth of Venus though, because if I talked about every piece I was excited to see in there, you'd never get done reading this blog. Suffice it to say that the Uffizi was everything I hoped it would be - and more. It was unreal to see all of these awesome paintings in real life. We were a little bummed because our audio guide from Rick Steves wasn't working, but that wasn't enough to get me down. Not when I had my Birth of Venus to see.

I was practically running to get to this room. I couldn't wait any longer. When I finally did get to see it, I was completely "wow"ed. Completely and totally. I was trying to get as close as I could to see it, and I guess I accidentally got a little too close, and a loud beeping started going out and the security people started yelling at me to step back. It was a little scary. Oops! I just wanted to see it up close! I love her Venus' face in this. It is SOOOO beautiful. I love the pastel, soft colors. The whole tone of this picture is sweetness, innocence, and beauty. This is what I think of when I think of the Renaissance. It is pure Renaissance beauty, as Venus is washed up having been born from the foam of a wave. All of my anticipation and excitement was totally worth it. Seeing this in real life was amazing. AMAZING!! 

View of Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi

View of the Duomo from the Uffizi

After spending a ton of time wandering through the Uffizi, we headed to our last sight of the day - a walk up to Piazza Michelangelo to get a birds-eye view of Florence. It was quite the walk, especially on our already exhausted feet, but it was well worth the climb. Plus, we saw some cool things along the way.

This is a replica of the David, standing where the original one stood in Palazzo Vecchio. I think my David is even cuter than Michelangelo's. :)

This picture has a fun story. This was taken on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the most famous bridge in all of Florence. We were trying to get a good angle when a cute, cute old man came up and asked us if we wanted him to take our picture. We said yes, and got talking to the man a little bit. We found out that he was born and raised in Florence, and was just out for an evening stroll. He told us that he wanted us to stoop down a bit so we could get a view of that bridge in the background. He went on to tell us that during World War II (as soon as he said that, Dave's little ears perked up) all of the bridges were destroyed, except for the Ponte Vecchio (which we were standing on). They had to rebuild all of the bridges in town, and he said that the one in the background of this picture is the most beautiful bridge in all of Florence. He was such a darling little man, and we loved talking with him. And as a bonus, we got a picture of what the locals think is the most beautiful bridge. Can't beat that!

View towards Tuscany from Piazza Michelangelo

The view from Piazza Michelangelo. Isn't it beautiful?? 

I know I've said it a million, zillion times, but I LOVED the Duomo. It was just amazing.

Ponte Vecchio

Here's a video of the view. It was stunning.

On our way to our dinner place (which was conveniently pretty close to our hotel), we listened to a walking tour from Rick Steves of some famous sights to see along the main drag of town. It was getting pretty chilly, but we still managed to get some good pictures in.

I LOVE FLORENCE!!

This is a spot in Palazzo Vecchio where Savanarola was burned at the stake. He was a monk who came into town and tried to reform Florence. He thought they were being much too hedonistic and humanist with all their nude paintings. He was successful for a few years, and many painters (including my favorite, Botticelli) threw their works of art into fires designed to purge the city of unholy and impure practices. After a few years, people decided that they liked the Renaissance way of thinking better, and they burned him at the stake. 

Rick Steves' audio guide! We loved it. 

We ate dinner at La Trattoria Burrasca. At first, we thought it was a little sketchy, because nobody was there and it was kind of a hole in the wall place, but we decided to stick with it anyway. And good thing we did! You usually need a reservation, but luckily we came in early enough that they still had an empty table we could sit at. About ten minutes after we got there, more people started showing up and the place was full within 30 minutes. They were turning people away like crazy because they had no room for them. We could hear the chefs singing at the top of their lungs to some awesome Italian music. It was so much fun - we felt like real, authentic Italians for a night.

We decided to be a little more exciting and order an appetizer. We ordered a cheese plate with 3 different kinds of cheese and it. was. delicious. SO good! It reminded Dave a lot of his time in Spain.

Yummy cheese!!

The meal I ate here was my favorite one of our trip. It was butter cheese linguine, and if you've ever had the buttered noodles at Noodles & Company, it tasted like that but a million zillion times better. It was DELICIOUS. Dave had gnocchi and he loved it too. We definitely found the right place to eat tonight.

After dinner we headed back to our little Casa Rabatti and gave our feet some much needed rest. They were sure tired. We slept great, but I was so sad to think about leaving Florence the next morning. I had so enjoyed my time here. It was my favorite stop of the trip. I will of course be going back some day. :)