Livorno/Pisa/Firenze, Italia: We spent yesterday on a tour of Pisa and Florence, Italy. It was a long day. What follows is a reprise of that experience.
We’d been to Pisa before and it is still an amazing place. It consists of three buildings within a walled enclosure, sort of a grassy park. There is, of course, the famous leaning tower. Many don’t know that it is just the bell tower for an adjacent, rather grand church.
The other two buildings are first the church mentioned above, large and in Romanesque style. The second building is a baptistery which is likewise large and circular in floor plan, with a domed roof. The baptistery is our favorite; it looks like a wedding cake made of Carrera marble.
We found one of the two places to sit in the entire multi-acre enclosure, a nice flat marble slab that forms part of the pediment for a column on the rear elevation of the church. We sat there looking at the baptistery for maybe a half hour, avoiding the Japanese tourists doing the trite “I’m holding up the leaning tower” photos. Question: why must all Japanese tourists act like they’re doing bad impressions of Japanese tourists?
Our second stop was Firenze, known to English speakers as Florence. It is not a Roman city, mostly built during the renaissance by the Medicis and their competitors, and like Rome it is not coastal. It was our first, and likely last, visit to Florence.
Old Florence largely consists of over-decorated churches, big “palaces” that look like bureaucratic warrens, and outdoor sculptures that appear classical but are really political in intent. Then there are the famous bronze door sculptures that were intended as biblical primers for illiterate Italians.
Our reactions? We were not impressed. The DrsC found Florence to be old, tired, crowded, cramped, and over-hyped. We were there on a Monday and the Uffizi Gallery is closed on Mondays. The Ponte Vecchio is unusual but not beautiful as many bridges in Venice are. Florence is not nearly as grand as Rome nor as beautiful as Paris.
The Firenze municipal police may be corrupt, but they sure have sharp looking uniforms. As the other DrC says, “the Italians have style.” On the other hand I have difficulty getting used to being charged for using public toilets. Europeans are proud of their socialized medicine but have no problem with capitalist crappers. Different strokes….
