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[Thursday 13 June 2013]
Guided city tour of Florence—Santa Chiara Hotel, Chianciano Terme, Siena
Day 165 Fri 14 June 2Chron 6-7, Psalm 136
Started a PowerPoint presentation of photos from Tuesday — got 10 slides done (06:14). Breakfast was 7.15am this morning, for us to set of for Florence at 8am. We made a brief stop at a vantage point on a hill above the city.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:06
A view over Florence
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:06
A view over Florence — detail 1
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:06
A view over Florence — detail 2
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:24
View over Florence to the left of the first, showing the Cathedral (centre)
View over Florence to the left of the first, showing the Cathedral — detail
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:36
View over Florence to the left of the previous one
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:36
View over Florence to the left of the previous one — detail showing the Old Palace
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:36
View over Florence to the left of the previous one — detail showing the Old Bridge
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:02:50
Another view over Florence showing the Cathedral (right) and the Old Palace (left)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:04:50
Same location, looking behind: bronze replica of Michelangelo’s David
We were set down near Piazza Piave, where there was a watchtower (Torre della Zecca Vecchia — “Tower of the Old Mint”), which had formed part of the eastern end of the city walls. Jane led us on a straight, seemingly long, way, along Via dei Malcontenti and its continuation, Via San Giuseppe, to Piazza Santa Croce. Here, those who hadn’t opted for the guided tour left us, if they hadn’t done so already; and here we met Rino our guide, who pointed out the façade of the Opera di Santa Croce and spoke about the place.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:43:24
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 10:44:12
Basilica of Santa Croce
He led us on, stopping a few times to talk about this feature or that feature, till we got to Piazza della Signoria, where he pointed out the deep-U shaped Uffizi building (not photographed in its entirety because much of it was masked by scaffolding, in the arcade of which there were a number of “living sculptures”.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:17:50
Our guide, Rino — background: part of the Uffizi
He also showed us the Palazzo Vecchio and its sculptures, recommending a visit there because it was as good as the other museums but less well known and therefore less likely to cause delays with queues, and the Loggia dei Lanzi with its sculptures, both Renaissance (“Rinascimento” in Italian) and ancient Roman.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:24:12
Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace); replica of Michelangelo’s David (left); Baninelli’s
Hercules and Cacus (right)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:24:36
Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa, in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:26:32
Palazzo Vecchio, with corner of the Loggia dei Lanzi just visible (right)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:29:52
Fountain of Neptune, outside the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:30:20
Statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:34:26
Palazzo Vecchio, with corner of the Loggia dei Lanzi just visible (right)
We visited the Piazza della Repubblica, where he showed us the bronze map of the city centre.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:44:00
Arch and “Column of Abundance” in the Piazza della Repubblica
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:45:28
Rino shows us the model of the city cast in bronze in the Piazza della
Repubblica.
He took us as far as the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, where he especially pointed out the eastern door of the Baptistery of San Giovanni.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:52:02
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:52:30
Battistero di San Giovanni (Baptistery of St. John)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:54:14
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:54:46
Top of Giotto’s Campanile
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:59:38
East doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni (“the Gates of Paradise”)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 11:59:38
East doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni (“the Gates of Paradise”) — same photo, straightened out
1.Adam and Eve 2.Cain and Abel
3.Noah 4.Abraham
5.Isaac with Esau and Jacob 6.Joseph
7.Moses 8.Joshua
9.David 10.Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:04:28
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:07:48
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Before he left us he pointed the direction to the Medici Chapel, but
Janet and I didn’t, in fact, go there. First priority was lunch, and we found a suitable-looking establishment nearby and went in.
I had a pizza and a Fanta orange and Janet had two Coca Cola Light. One who appeared to be the proprietor seemed to be getting very cross about something, and uttered sotto voce “Madonna Santa!” With that, and a young woman in Rome yesterday dragging a small child and exclaiming “Dio mio!”, I was getting to know how to swear in Italian. On leaving there, we went in a “Tabacchi” and bought two postage stamps for yesterday’s postcards, then went to have a look inside and around the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:50:58
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:51:36
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:53:28
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:54:12
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:55:54
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:56:38
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:57:08
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:58:42
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 12:59:56
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:04:30
Cathedral (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:09:12
We went back to the Piazza della Signoria, and had a more detailed look at the statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:12:56
Back at the Piazza della Signoria
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:15:02
Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:16:38
Giambologna’s Hercules beating the Centaur Nessus, in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:17:08
Roman statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:17:42
Roman statue Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus, in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:18:22
Roman statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:19:26
Roman statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:20:08
Pio Fedi’s The Rape of Polyxena, in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:20:26
Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa, in the Loggia dei Lanzi
Then we went in the Palazzo Vecchio, joining the not-too-long queue waiting to pay to visit the museum. But it was somewhat dearer than we expected, access to the tower was even dearer, and it seemed to be taking each person a long time to be served, with a lot of questions — and I lost the desire to be there, so we left. The rooms on the way to the ticket office had been quite decorative, anyway.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:22:12
Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:23:16
Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:23:56
Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:24:20
Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace)
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:25:06
Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace)
I wanted to see the Ponte Vecchio, so we made our way to the River Arno.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:42:32
Looking down the River Arno from beside the Ponte Vecchio
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:45:08
Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) — west side
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:47:14
Arcade (right) supporting the tile-roofed Vasari Corridor, which runs from the Palazzo Vecchio, over the Ponte Vecchio, to the Palazzo Pitti.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 13:48:10
Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) — east side
Then we went back to Santa Croce, a complex of buildings (which I guess is why it’s referred to sometimes as the “Opera” di Santa Croce). The entrance was on the side left of the façade, and I sat on a stone bench while
Janet waited in the not-too-long queue to pay our €6 apiece to get in. Its monuments include the tomb of Michelangelo and of Galileo, and there’s a cenotaph to Dante Alighieri. It was only afterwards that I realised that I’d missed seeing Galileo’s tomb. Michelangelo’s is impressive, not least because of the trompe-l’œil painting around it. It was refreshingly cool in there.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:13:38
Back at the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:26:52
Fresco by the entrance to the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:30:18
Santi di Tito’s Resurrection, in the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:30:38
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:31:46
Tomb of Marquis Gino Capponi in the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:32:38
Tomb of Giovanni Battista Niccolini in the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:33:24
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:33:54
Tomb of Michelangelo in the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:33:54
Tomb of Michelangelo in the Basilica of Santa Croce — same photo, straightened out
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:34:34
Monument to Dante Alighieri in the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:35:06
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:38:48
Basilica of Santa Croce
Painting of Jesus in Gethsemane. The disciples sleep. An angel gives him the cup he must drink.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:46:14
Fresco by Giotto in the Peruzzi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:46:28
Peruzzi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:47:22
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:48:32
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:49:06
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:51:38
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:52:32
Monument to Lorenzo Bartolini in the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:54:30
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:54:46
Fresco by Bastiano Mainardi, Assumption of the Virgin with the Gift of the
Girdle, in the Baroncelli Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:55:34
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:57:40
Cloister of the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:58:44
Cloister of the Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 14:59:42
Cloister of the Basilica of Santa Croce
Off the cloister, running parallel to its nearer long side, was a gallery with lots of bits of sculptures and bas-reliefs, but we were out of time and needed to get back to the rendezvous point.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:04:50
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:04:58
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:05:10
Basilica of Santa Croce
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:05:18
Basilica of Santa Croce
The straight stretch, along Via San Giuseppe and Via dei Malcontenti, back to the Piazza Piave and Torre della Zecca Vecchia, didn’t seem quite as long, going back, as it had, outward — just as well, because by now I was very footsore indeed and
Janet was suffering with the heat of the day.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:11:58
Tabernacle on the corner of Via dei Malcontenti and Via delle Casine
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:12:40
Via dei Malcontenti
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:20:52
Torre della Zecca Vecchia, on the Piazza Piave
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:21:00
Views across the River Arno
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:21:14
Views across the River Arno
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:21:34
Views across the River Arno
Friday 14 June 2013 — 15:22:00
Our waiting coach, nearby
Although Agnelo would be driving the Humberside party to the airport tomorrow, this was his last full-complement holiday-excursion, so we gave him €5 as we got off. Copied today’s photos (90 of them) from the camera (17:29–17:32). Finished the
PowerPoint presentation for Tuesday (18:55). The last photo in it proved still to need resizing and editing for contrast,
etc. (18:48). I also wrote the two postcards purchased in Rome yesterday, now that I had stamps to put on them. We went down for dinner at 7.30pm. We saw Jane by the hotel reception, and gave her £20 in sterling. “What’s this for?” she exclaimed. There was something on the postage stamps about their validity or lack of it, so we asked Jane this. She didn’t know, and asked the hotel manager who was standing behind the reception desk. He didn’t answer directly, but took the stamped postcards off us to include them in the rest of the hotel’s mail. In the dining room, we decided to give Agnelo another €5, and put €10 in the gratuities basket on the nearby table for the hotel staff. (I think those were the amounts we gave.) Jane collected €6.40 “hotel tax” from us. Its possibility was mentioned in the information we’d been sent, though it hadn’t been levied at the first hotel location. Back in the room, I snapped a couple of
photos[i] out of the window (20:54).
[i] Don’t know whether “a couple of photos”, written more or less contemporaneously, is an error, because there’s only one photo now.
Friday 14 June 2013 — 20:54:00
View from the window of the hotel bedroom
Even though I’d copied the missing Bible-reading playlists, they unaccountably still wouldn’t play from the
“little
feller’s” internal HDD. Was able to play them from the… external HDD, though, so did Day 156’s (to 21:45) and Day 157’s (to 22:13) readings. Copied the aforementioned two photos from the camera (22:17) before jotting a few notes in “2013.doc” and heading for bed.
[Saturday 15 June 2013]
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