It is my first exposure to great art.  You can hardly avoid it in Florence.

David

David

In the main square is a replica of Michelangelo’s David (the original is now in the Galleria della Academia).  The David was originally ordered for a niche high up the cathedral’s facade, but the town fathers, stunned by its beauty,  placed it instead just outside the town hall.  There he stands, 17′ tall.  No flesh and blood male was ever that perfect.  He is relaxed, his slingshot and stone ready, his head  turned to the left as if just catching sight of his opponent.

Santa Maria del Fiore - Florence - Italy - 086

Santa Maria del Fiore

Walking down a narrow street I catch a glimpse of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, a fantasy confection of green and pink and white vertical marble tiles.  Entering the piazza, the size of the Cathedral and the octagonal dome that tops it take my breath away.  Engineered by Brunelleschi, it is the largest brick dome ever constructed –  171′ from the cathedral floor to the top of the dome, with a span of 144′.

 

 

Doors of Paradise

Doors of Paradise

On the piazza, a little distance from the Cathedral, is the Baptistry of St. John with the gilded bronze doors designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti.  Michelangelo called them the Doors of Paradise.  The name stuck –  for good reason.  Scenes from the old and new testament emerge from the metal in high relief, tantalizingly real.

 

 

You can’t really prepare for the Uffizi Gallery.  I am already a bit stunned

Birth of Venus

Birth of Venus

walking past one  masterpiece after another when I come upon Botticelli’s Birth of Venus  and his Allegory of Spring.  It doesn’t matter that it is hot and the gallery is packed with tourists, the paintings reach out, and even with my untutored eye I know that I am in the presence of something extraordinary.

Primavera

Primavera

 

 

The youth hostel, too, is special.  They tell us that the villa once housed Mussolini’s mistress, Clara Petacci.  (She met a gruesome end, along with her lover, shot and strung up by her feet outside a gas station in Milan.)

The youth hostel kitchen is open to us and it is here, out of necessity and hunger,  that my interest in cooking is born.  No more will I pay  50 cents for a plate of sticky strands topped with a tablespoon red stuff.  I will boil those strands myself and pour on as much bottled sauce as I want.

Next – Venice, La Serenissima