Day 41: Florence.

Sitting in a trattoria by the central market, recommended by my friend Virginia. It is fabulous, no surprise. I am having wine with lunch because, why the hell not? I am in Italy, and I don't have a job to report to. Florence: lovely, as expected. My room is about 50 m from the Duomo, on the piazza. When I got here, I immediately hung my head out the window, all excited about the view. I wondered, why isn't every single other person in these piazza rooms also hanging out the windows? And then I realized, oh yes, they're all out enjoying Florence. So I headed out to do the same.

I really hadn't done any research before I came to Italy, knowing that there was plenty to see and I had no particular agenda. All the more fun: I pull out my map,and am surprised to find that I am about a block from the Laurentian Library. I go there directly: it is purported to be one of the strangest, most perverse pieces of architecture of its age, by Michelangelo. And it is. The famous almost-liquid stairs, pouring out of the library above, are practically moving, and they do puddle at the bottom. It's a really small space, very vertical, which makes the dynamics all the more strange. It's know for taking the classical language and twisting it until things feel wobbly; for example, the columns should rest on something substantial, like a huge base or at least the ground. Here, they just stop 2/3 of the way down, and these little scrolls are set into the wall underneath. Mentally, you feel like it's all about to topple. Even more fun, the scrolls actually crash into each other in the corners, like they're an afterthought and just mashed together- but this is Michelangelo, and he is messing with you. A genius in a lot of areas, Michaelangelo didn't start his career in architecture until he was 40, a fact I happen to really like. One more note on the surreal space: its's an icky, grey-ish green color. The stone itself feels chalky and cold and more like clay than marble. The reflections of light in the space are a bit seasick- it's so odd, for someone who was a master of color theory. So, so interesting

After the library, and aimless stroll, but I immediately run smack into a sign for Dante's house. Brief flashback: when I was here years ago during fall break, on a semester abroad, there were 4 of us stomping around the streets with our backpacks. It was pouring down rain, and I remember being sick and no help whatsoever in finding a place, but we finally found a room on our 6th or 8th try. We dropped off our bags and opened the window, and the clouds parted and in my memory there is even a rainbow....and we looked down below us, onto Dante's house. So today I knew I had to go in. It's better from the outside, actually: the museum made no sense at all, and was mostly a collection of coats of arms, unrelated to Dante. But it's a beautiful little spot.

And so: Ponte Vecchio, and piazzas, and the Central Market, and a perfect meal. Finishing my coffee, we'll see what I stumble across next...

And then later:
After my giant meal: went into the Duomo, just to marvel. The outside is so, so much more ornate than I remembered. The inside is much more simple, but with a staggering scale. From there, I wandered south through the Nuovo Mercato, then (again on my friend Virginia’s advice), made the long climb up to the Piazzola Michaelangelo, on the other side of the Ponte Vecchio, to watch the sunset. It’s really not that long, but very steep. And oh so worth it- from the terrace at the top, you can look back down over Florence, the river, and the tidy row of bridges, at the sunset. It’s also the first time I could see the gentle mountains surrounding the city- this is hill country, after all. Florence is nestled down in this bowl of foothills- it’s as if it filled in every possible inch of flat land, but balked at actually making the climb upwards, and just stopped. (This sounds perfectly reasonable to me, if it had anything like as much lunch as I just did.) At sunset, of course, it’s all lit up with sunlight reflecting off the water.

If Rome is a watercolor, though, Florence is an oil painting. Everything here is more solid, heavier, deeper shades; the light is different, although it’s not very far north, really. Maybe it’s just the Gravitas. This is the heart of the Renaissance, the Medicis, intellectual discovery, literature, and rational thought as we understand it.