Today we headed in the late afternoon to brave the heat and the crowds of Florence (Firenze) and intended only to do the Rick Steve’s walking tour of the city and to arrange for reservations later this week to two of the major art museums in town. We figured there’d be a slim chance of getting into the Uffizi as reservations are required about a month in advance.
The first gallery/museum, the Accademia, happened to also be the first stop on the walking tour as well so we started there. Approaching the museum, we saw that the line of folks waiting was only about 12 people deep so we decided to take the plunge and go ahead in to see Michelangelo’s David. It was more amazing than we thought it would be – especially as an art history novice. It was definitely larger than we expected and we could tell that it was one of the more remarkable marble statues that we had seen and by now, we’ve seen a lot.
The museum did a good job of setting up the statue and actually juxtaposed the work of Michelangelo against the work of Robert Maplethorpe. We really liked the unfinished works where the statues were practically bursting out of the marble. Good stuff! Wish we could take pictures but they weren’t allowed. Staff ran around saying “No Photo” and we didn’t want to try to sneak anything. That’s why we were happy to see a replica of David outside the Palazzo Vecchio where we could freely take pics. Anyway, back at the Accademia – then we ran around the museum and saw all of the pre-Renaissance art depicting scenes of the Baby Jesus and Mary…along with the dying Jesus and a few old instruments enjoyed by the Medici family.
We continued on our walking tour picking up some fantastic gelato along the way – Maylene had mint chocolate and I had caramel — yummm… We have definitely discovered the pleasure of a piccolo (small) cone of ice cream in the heat of the summer and this was one of the best.
Anyway – so I had heard a rumor that the Uffizi would be open late on Tuesdays and figured that at least we could get our reservations there for a time later in this week. As it turns out, the museum was open and there was no line, so we went for it. The most famous painting there was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and it was beautiful. Again, no pics allowed in the museum but we managed to take some great shots of the sun setting across the Arno River. We figured they didn’t charge admission for the sunset:
Due to closing times of the museum, we kind of had to buzz through – most admiring of the non-religious art we came across. I mean, really – there’s only so much Baby Jesus here and Crucified Jesus there that one can appreciate. Maylene kept joking, look – “there’s Baby Jesus on his first pony ride, there he is with his first ice cream cone…” riffing Ellen Degeneres’s stand-up bit called The Beginning. Too funny!
It was pretty cool to see some of the works that we had only seen before in books and to also admire the beautiful frescoes and gilded ceilings of the former Medici family offices. What a life!
Gorgeous!