Florence. We hopped on a fast speed train and made it to Florence by 11am.
On the train to Florence
After dropping our bags at our hotel, we took a quick walking tour of the city, led by one of the UD staff. The tour took us past all of Florence’s principal attractions, including the San Lorenzo quarter and its leather market and churches, the Duomo Cathedral, the Dominican convent basilica of Santa Maria Novella, and the famous Old
Bridge or Ponte Vecchio over the Arno River.
Santa Maria Novella
San Lorenzo
The Duomo Cathedral and the Baptistry
Our group on tour
The Duomo Cathedral
A closeup of the fresco above the door to the Duomo
Unlike in Rome, in Florence you have to pay to enter most of the churches. However we did visit one that did not have an entrance fee. Orsanmichele gets its name from the fact that when it was first built (about 750) as the oratory of St. Michael, it was surrounded by the vegetable garden (orto) of a Benedictine monastery. The present building was constructed in 1336 as a market and grain store; by 1380 the first floor had become a church. In 1339 it was decided that each of the major guilds should provide a statue of their respective patron saint to decorate the exterior. By happy coincidence, nothing was completed until the Renaissance was in full swing in the 15th century, so the commissions were executed by artists of the calibre of Verrocchio, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Luca della Robbia. Most of the niches for the saints are now empty or filled with copies. In the Museo di Orsanmichele, in the upper two stories of this building, you can see many of the sculptures.
Our next stop was lunch where we tried one of the dishes Florence is famous for: bistecca alla fiorentina. A porterhouse cut of beef, weighing anywhere from two to eight pounds and made from the local Chianina cattle breed, it is served well-roasted on the outside, red and bloody on the inside. These T-bone steaks are cooked on the grill (traditionally, using chestnut embers), with salt, pepper, olive oil and a lemon wedge for taste.
After our ginormous lunch, we met with our local guide Klaas for a tour of the Galleria degli Uffizi, one of the greatest museums of Renaissance, Baroque and Early Modern art in the entire world. We saw many famous works of art including Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi, Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac. Klaas was an amazing guide and he really made the art and the history come to life.
After our museum tour we spent a few hours shopping for leather goods (which Florence is famous for) before returning to our hotel for the night.
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