Blog

Summary of these posts so far:

• Planning, packing, and flights: here.
• Car rentals and driving in Italy: here.
• Italian restaurants and the hotel we stayed at: here.
• Academy Gallery and trains: here.

This week: Florence’s Cathedral (a.k.a. the Duomo or Santa Maria dei Fiori), markets in Florence, restrooms, and footwork.

Art in the Duomo

Booking the tour of the Academy plus the Duomo from TakeWalks.com (see last week’s post) allowed us to bypass the line to enter the Cathedral. Although entrance to the Cathedral is free, the line to enter can be long. By the way, some churches in Italy won’t allow tourists in if a service is in progress, so check in advance if you’re planning to visit on a Sunday or a religious holiday.

For rest of the Florence Cathedral complex, you need the Grande Museo del Duomo pass (Dome, Campanile, Baptistery, Museo del Opera del Duomo). We had that pass from our Academy / Duomo tour.

The Cathedral of Florence was begun in 1296, completed in 1436. Unlike many other Italian churches, its interior was never renovated, which is a Very Good Thing. Here are the don’t-miss artworks inside the Cathedral:

• The paintings on the wall of Sir John Hawkwood (by Paolo Uccello, 1436) & Niccolò da Tolentino (by Andrea del Castagno, 1456). If you looked at the 13th-14th-c. paintings on gold leaf at the Academy, the realism of these paintings, which were executed less than a century later, should stun you.

• Painting of Dante with a view of Florence in 1465, including the shiny new Cathedral.

• Huge painting on the interior of the dome by Vasari. You can see it close up from the gallery that circles the base of the dome.
• Fantastic mosaic floor. You should always, always, always look at the floor in buildings as old as the Cathedral. (The floor in Siena’s Cathedral is spectacular: more on that in a later post.)

Brunelleschi’s Dome

Climbing the Dome of Florence’s Cathedral was one of the highlights of our trip to Tuscany … and I say that as someone who adores painting and sculpture, and sought out hundreds of artworks. Something about the mere shape of the Dome is very appealing to me, but the real attraction is the story behind how it was designed and built. For that, I highly recommend Ross King book Brunelleschi’s Dome.

NOTE IF YOU’RE PLANNING TO CLIMB THE DOME: There are no elevators. There’s no assistance except handrails from the ground level of the Cathedral to the lantern of the Dome, almost 300 feet above (about 30 stories). No restrooms. No sellers of bottled water. Wear shoes that won’t slip on centuries-old stone steps, carry a bottle of water, and pace yourself.

With our guide from the Academy, we climbed to the gallery and the terraces, at the base of the Dome. Michelangelo’s David was originally intended to stand at this level.

Our guide left us after the terraces. We climbed to the lantern, at the tip-top of the Dome, via stairways between the inner and outer shells. The stairs were designed by Brunelleschi nearly 600 years ago for construction and maintenance of the Dome. More photos of the inside of the Dome are here.

The lantern has lovely ornamental details that you can’t see from the ground. And as you’d expect, the view from the top is spectacular.

Mercato Centrale

The Mercato Centrale is one of the places Florentines go for groceries. There are no sizeable supermarkets in the city center, but several large buildings such as this one house vendors who sell meat and produce in the morning and early afternoon. We never had time to explore a market: they were all shutting down by the time we finished our museum tours.

We went to the Mercato Centrale because our guide for the Academy and the Duomo said the second floor has a lot of different restaurants, like a food court but with much more variety and no global franchises. You pick up your food and sit at communal tables. At peak tourist season, the Mercato Centrale’s second floor is very crowded. We ate pulled pork. It was so-so (I like it gloppier), but the portions were huge.

Restrooms

The facilities in places like the Mercato Centrale are large and clean. A staff of attendants keeps them that way.

There’s usually a charge of 1 euro to use the restroom – half a euro, outside the cities. Keep some 1 & 2 euro coins handy.

Watch your footing!

Coming down the stairs of the Mercato Centrale, I was looking toward stalls full of leather goods, and didn’t see an extra half step. I fell down and severely bruised my knee.

As soon as I fell, half a dozen charming Italians came to ask if I was OK, help me up, offer me a chair. One of them said he sees 10-15 people fall on that spot every day. He’s asked the authorities to put some markers on the steps, but they say the building’s old, so adding signs is not allowed. The lesson: wear shoes that won’t slip easily, and watch where you step!

Next week: the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the museum attached to the Cathedral. Trust me, it’s a lot more exciting than it sounds.

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