Florence

Saturday 20th February

Michael's recommendations mean we make a slow start today. Coming to the outskirts of Perugia we agree that it would be a dereliction to bypass the town so we loop up into the medieval centre before carrying on to the shores of Lake Trasimene.

'Hannibal defeated the Romans at the battle here in 217BC.'

'With or without elephants?'

The shores are peaceful, the water twinkles but we don't stop at the beach and we only pause for coffee in Arezzo, lovely as it is, because Florence is now not far away and we are all keen to get there. We wind down through lush green Tuscan hills and villages punctuated with columns of poplars and cypresses. The villages come thicker and faster until they merge into one. At the point where we get our first view, Florence is a distant smudge, the Bruneleschi dome rising alongside its Campanile out of the wide sweep of terracotta rooves. The really romantic view is from Fiesole but our approach is south of there on flatter ground.

Florence, the seat of power of the Medici princes, displayed its wealth through its buildings. 

'So what's changed?'

'Look at London.'

'Look at Paris.'

'Vienna.'

'Everywhere we've been.'

The Duomo is a statement of the city's might but it is also an architectural wonder: Bruneleschi, the architect, was an innovator and the interior is light and airy, with a feeling of vast space largely thanks to the unsupported dome sweeping heavenward. Breathtaking. The opulent Medici chapels in the Duomo leave us in no doubt of their status. The family exercised immense power over a small area but with far reaching influence. Even the Pope trod warily with the Medicis. In the days when Italy was made up of principalities, continually at each other's throats, Dante Alighieri, he of the Divine Comedy, was exiled on pain of death from Florence. He lived out his life barely a hundred miles away in Lunigiana.

Michael catches up with us later in the evening and quizzes us on what we have seen and done so far.

'Have you seen the Brancacci Chapel? and the Fra Angelico at San Marco?'

'We've only just arrived, Michael.'

'Tomorrow, first thing. You must see them.'


Sunday 21st.

The frescos of the Brancacci Chapel are the work of 21-year-old Masaccio. The colours are vivid, the play of light brings the faces alive; the images, familiar from prints and cards, leap off the walls in a way no reproduction ever can.  Masaccio died in 1448, aged only 27. While Fra Angelico's fresco figures in the convent of San Marco do not bring to life portraits of Rinascimento figures with quite so much energy, the natural simplicity of the Annunciation is just as captivating. 

There is a lot of water flowing in the Arno under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio and no-one is in a hurry to leave Florence so we award ourselves an extra night here. Besides, we need a bit of shopping time tomorrow as our boots and socks are feeling the effects of the huge mileage they have covered. There is also the temptation of Giulio Giannini's glorious shop of marbled paper and hand-made note books on the Piazza de' Pitti. It is closed on Sundays and it would be such a shame to leave without a bit of a browse.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 7 Florence to Santiago de Compostela

Image
Monday 22nd February By the time we have bought new boots and succumbed to an expensive note book bound in gorgeous Italian marbled paper, it is almost lunchtime but we have a long way to go, and new boots to break in. 'Don't throw away the old ones yet!' Instead of sinking into a chair on a Florentine Piazza, we buy picnic food and set off for the coast. Tempting as it is to call in and say hello to the leaning tower of Pisa, we take the more northerly route through Lucca and Viareggio, past the marble quarries at Carrara and on to La Spezia and the Cinque Terre. Here we join the Sentiero Azzurro, the cliff path connecting the five towns with their brightly coloured houses that cling to the steep coastline. It is getting dark by the time we reach Genoa and the new boots have done quite enough for one day. The birthplace of Christopher Columbus seems like a good place for footsore travellers to stop for the night. Tuesday 23rd We set out bright and early. 'Lunch in Mona
Read more

Week 6 Greece and Italy

Image
  Monday 15th February Likou was there to meet us as promised, his eyes twinkling from the depths of his wrinkles, on the inland edge of Marathokampos. He looked us up and down. We are walking fit, hardened by almost five thousand miles over every kind of terrain, and his Greek sideways nod said he could see this. Even so, Mount Kerkis rises steeply from the seashore, its rocky head as grizzled as Likou's, an imposing and rugged climb. He set a slow pace at first but, as we bunched behind him Likou, an observer not a talker, picked up speed until we were swinging along at our usual rhythm. Once we had gained some height, instead of taking the trail that led towards the rocks, he turned along the flank of the mountain, heading steadily inland and dropping at length into a green valley spangled with anemones, red, violet, white and humming with bees. Ahead of us the track was lined with brightly coloured hives, like miniature beach huts. Some of us were not keen to go any nearer but
Read more

Saturday evening, Sunday morning 23-4 January

Image
Hungary, the bits we've seen of it, is, on the whole flat. We walked on into the dusk and crossed uneventfully into Romania, which promises us mountains. This, we reflected, might be a mixed blessing: easier on the eye, harder on the calf muscles. We were, however, still on the great Hungarian plain even here and couldn't see now, in the dark, whether the landscape before us was changing much. It didn't feel like it.  Eventually we arrived in Timisoara, a city big enough to offer us a comfortable night's rest.  The squares of old city centre are lined with brightly coloured buildings and two cathedrals, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic, stand opposite one another in Piata Unirii, each as elegant and impressive as the other. We weren't surprised when our waiter told us, in perfect English, that Timisoara is know as 'Little Vienna'. He was a chatty fellow (he introduced himself as Phil) who had come away from his plumbing job in Birmingham after the Brexit refe
Read more