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| The Duomo and Brunelleschis' Dome, From our Roof-Top |
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| Our Window View Santa Croce Basilica |
Our three weeks in Italy
are winding down. We look forward to a
few days in Venice and then we will be heading for home. This trip has been amazing, but I think that
both Susan and I are looking forward to getting back to New England. Hopefully, by the time this blog is posted we
will be enjoying New England’s crisp autumn weather and brilliant fall foliage.
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| Alley Green, Florence |
After a lovely week in the
relaxed environs of Tuscany, the next days of our trip were spent in the
cities. Florence and Bologna were both
fascinating, but in different ways. I had
planned to cover both Florence and Bologna in this article, but we have been so
busy along the way that it has been difficult to find any time to work on the
images. When you are in such beautiful
and interesting places it is hard to justify wasting time in front of a
computer screen. This article will focus
on Florence, including as many pictures as I can get to process.
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| Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Uffizi Gallery |
You will notice that this
article is a few days late. Since
getting back, I had to deal with my wonderful Fall Foliage Workshop, and a
massive dose of jet-lag. I can’t wait to
work my way through the rest of the Italian images, I know what I will be doing
during stick season, but in the meantime, here are a few glimpses of the
fascinating city of Florence.
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| Palazzo Pitti |
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| The Duomo Dome |
Florence is known as the
birthplace of the Renaissance, and is rich with monuments to that important
epoch of history. The city is dominated by Brunelleschi’s remarkable cathedral
dome, completed in 1436, topping the intricately ornamented multicolored
Duomo. There was no possibility that I
could get Susan to climb to the top of the dome, but she did manage to get to
the roof-top bar at our hotel. From the
roof we had a spectacular panoramic view of the city. Both of our kids were staying in Air
B&Bs, but they were sure to join us for evening cocktails on our roof.
The Kids
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| Jeremy, Gina, Susan |
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| On the Roof Grayson, Abby, Kerry, Cuyler |
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| Ponte Vecchio |
Our hotel was on the Arno
River, close to the shop-lined medieval Ponte Vecchio, which was the only
bridge across the Arno that was left intact by the Germans in World War
II. Florence’s many narrow streets open
on busy plazas, churches, shops, and endless museums.
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| Uffizi Gallery Across the Arno River |
The Uffizi
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| Long Lines around the Uffizi Courtyard |
By far the most famous art
gallery is the Galleria degli Uffizi. The
Uffiz was built to house the massive collection of pictures and sculpture
collected by the powerful Medici family.
The museum is famous for long lines, but we were lucky to have reserved
tickets and had only a relatively short wait.
Once inside, the Uffiz is intimidating.
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| Ceiling Uffizi Gallery |
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| Tribuna Gallery |
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| Cosimo de Medici the Elder |
We saw only a fraction of the more than ninety galleries. Works by Botticelli, Leonardo da Vince,
Michelangelo, Raphael and many lesser known artists were on display, and along
the halls were ancient and more “modern” sculpture. After 3 hours we reached artistic overload and
had to escape for a relaxing afternoon exploring the Boboli Gardens behind the
Palazzo Pitti.
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| Adoration of the Magi (Detail, Unfinished) Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo |
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| Wheels, Florence |
Florence is a beautiful
and historic city. We explored much on
foot and ate much more. It was here that I finally found a Gluten free pizza! I began to tire of beautiful churches and statues and began studying the people on the street. I was inspired by an exhibition of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Musei Civici in San Gimignano. I may do an article solely on some of the wonderful faces of Italy.
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| Street Leather |
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| David by the Uffizi |
We were reluctant to leave. I didn’t know what to expect from Bologna,
but I was very pleasantly surprised. That part of the trip will need to wait
for the next article in this series, but I am heading back to New England and
given the fall foliage who knows when I will get back to the thousands of my
Italy pictures.
In the meantime, you can
follow my slowly growing archive on my
Blogna, Lake Como and Venice are to come!
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| Sunset on the Grand Canal |
Jeffrey Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com
603-363-8338
Very good photos, beautifule memories of Florence..Watch a video in Youtube athttps://youtu.be/Wzp8pgiZn7c
ReplyDeleteRead also article about Florence, alongside the Arno river inhttp://stenote.blogspot.com/2018/01/florence-along-arno-river.html