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Florence
The cradle of the Italian Renaissance, Florence has treasures too numerous to list. The easiest way to go for a day trip is to take a train from Terontola di Cortona, a station in the plain below Cortona on the main North-South railway. It’s impossible to see everything in Florence in a day, there is simply too much to do! In addition, each sight has unique opening times (with a seemingly random afternoon or morning off) and the queues for the Uffizi Gallery and Accademia are horrendous if you haven’t booked in advance.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of things and places to see:
Duomo
The marvel of its age, the cathedral dome was only finished long after the rest of the Duomo because no one had any idea of how to build it. The vast dimensions meant that supports and scaffolding could not be used in the dome’s construction. Filippo Brunelleschi spent years studying the ancient buildings in Rome, including the Pantheon. He came up with the idea of a double skinned dome built with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern, the dome supported itself as it went up. Today you can walk between the two skins of the dome and climb to the very top - not recommended for people with heart conditions, clautrophobia and vertigo!
Baptistry
See the Byzantine style mosaics inside and the bronze North and East doors - pretty much a lifetime’s work for the artist Ghiberti!
Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio
An impressive central square and building, there’s a lot to see in the Palazzo Vecchio but if it’s your first visit to Florence you are better off looking at it from outside.
Uffizi Gallery
You could spend a whole day trip to Florence inside the Uffizi Gallery, there are paintings by almost every well known medieval and Renaissance painter.
Ponte Vecchio
A beautiful bridge with jewellery shops along its length! Despite the number of tourists, I’m told prices are reasonable because of the competition.
San Marco
The Dominican monastery houses numerous works by Fra’ Angelico, one of the great Renaissance painters. A few minutes’ walk out of the city centre, it’s also less crowded than other museums.
Accademia
Advanced booking is advisable if you want to see Michelangelo’s David (there is a copy in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence’s main square). Originally meant to go on top of the Duomo, the huge hands are deliberate because it would have been viewed from below.
Bargello
Even though the David is in the Accademia, the old prison is the main sculpture museum, home to Donatello’s small bronze David and numerous other great sculptures.
Santa Maria Novella
Just outside the main train station, this church houses Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, which was possibly the first painting to be created under the newly laid down rules of perpective.
Brancacci Chapel (Located in the church of Santa Maria della Carmine)
Slightly off the beaten track, south of the River Arno, the Brancacci Chapel has superb frescoes of the Life of St Peter by Masaccio. A revolutionary painter for his time, Masaccio died young (28) and the cycle was finished 50 years after his death by Filippino Lippi. |