Firenze

Firenze was next for us. Just a couple of hours by train from Milan and we were in the heart of Tuscana, one of my favourite regions in the world. I’d been to Florence before, but I haven’t spent enough time there to do the city justice. As the birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence is among the most important cities that shaped our modern world.

Immediately upon arriving, we checked into our hotel and returned to the train station for a quick trip to Lucca for another great visit to Casa Cesaretti, where we took a nice walk inside the walls of Lucca, then a fantastic dinner at their home. Grazie a tutti. È stato bello rivedere tutti!

Our location in Florence couldn’t have been better, right on the bank of the Arno River and within sight of the Ponte Vecchio. Right next to us is Europe’s most visited museum, the Uffizi Gallery. Even as someone who knows nothing about art, it is laid out in chronological order so you can appreciate the advancements in perspectives the greats had. From two-dimensional religious icons in the 12th and 13th centuries to the early Renaissance art of Botticelli, followed by Michelangelo, Rafeal, da Vinci and others. These were the first to add depth and perspective to their images.

Florence was dominated by the Medici family dynasty. They built a palace in the city centre and also across the river. The palace across the river was built by a rival of the Medici, a Florentine banker named Luca Pitti. Pitti never completed his opulent palace, and the Medici swooped in and bought it for cents on the dollar. The two palaces are just over a kilometre from each other, and the Medici didn’t like having to walk through the streets and rub shoulders with the citizens, so they hired a man to complete a private corridor to connect the two places so they could avoid the commoners. You can walk through the recently restored Vasari Corridor today. In fact, it’s because the corridor travels over the Ponte Vecchio that the shops on the bridge are all jewellers. The Medici didn’t like the smell of the butcher shops, which were there in the 1500s, so they ordered the butchers to leave, and jewellers moved in.

Florence is best known for its Duomo and dome built by Brunelleschi, but the equally impressive Basilica di Santa Croce has the tombs of famous names of the Italian Renaissance, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Dante. Dante’s tomb is empty, however, as he is buried in Ravenna.

We watched our second soccer game of the trip, Fiorentina vs. Juventus. Juventus has the Canadian Johnathan David, but he only played a few minutes at the end. Fiorentina is dead last in Serie A this year, but that didn’t stop their supporters from being as loud as anyone we saw.