Monday, February 26, 2007
Florentine Adventure--Part 1
We spent last Thursday and Friday in Florence. Our quick assessment was that it was cleaner than Rome and more manageable, smaller and therefore walkable. It was a nice change from the chaos of Rome but we concluded that had we spent our four-month sojourn there we might have gotten bored. Plus, it has the art but not the ruins! In the Uffizi, Carter and I liked the Botticellis, Carter and David liked the Pieros and Stephen liked anything with St. Sebastian in it. After our reading on Renaissance art I've decided that I'd like to know more about Savonarola, the Dominican monk who denounced the paganism of the Medici and who was executed in the piazza outside the Uffizi. There is a marker on the precise spot. At Nerbone's, in a market similar to the Reading Terminal, we lunched on the local favorite bagnata, a beef sandwich dipped in meat juices (they like meat in Florence). Dinner was wonderful as well--I love the fagioli. I make these at home with a lot less success. On Friday we visited a museum on the history of science and saw Galileo's telescopes and his embalmed finger. You can't beat that! I've concluded that Galileo is overrated. It was Copernicus who first had the idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Maybe I'm missing something. I'm not sure that Galileo was really entitled to the elaborate tomb he has near Michelangelo's and Dante's in Santa Croce either.
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3 comments:
I'm so glad that you got to my adoptive city. I think that Florence is much superior to Rome as a city. It is much less chaotic and as you mentioned it is walkable. It is also more intimate and philosophical and it is definitely cleaner than Rome! When I lived there our trash was collected daily. The then communist city government gave us good services!
If you had spent your sabbatical in Florence instead of Rome you would certainly NOT have been bored. There is no end of art and there ARE ruins. Evidently you didn't take the bus to Fiesole to see the Roman theater there. There is also a museum in Fiesole dedicated to the Eutruscans, who were there before the Romans! The Romans, however, moved the city from atop the hill outside the city to the valley along the Arno, which on one level makes sense, but in the middle of August it is easy to understand the wisdom of the Eutruscans!
Fond reminiscences of Florence and of Rome instilled in Dante a deeper love of heaven and of our heavenly Father.
"All [who heav'nly] reign in safety and in bliss,
Ages long past or new, on one sole mark
Their love and vision [is] fix'd.
O trinal beam of individual star,
that charmst them thus, [the Trinity]
Vouchsafe one glance to gild our storm below!
"If the grim brood,
from Arctic shores that roam'd,
(Where Helice, forever, as she wheels,
Sparkles a mother's fondness on her son)
Stood in mute wonder 'mid the works of Rome, When to their view the Lateran arose
In greatness more than earthly;
I, who then
From human to divine had [passed],
from time unto eternity, and out of Florence
To justice and to truth, how might I choose
But marvel too?" (Paradise, Canto XXXI, Cary transl.)
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof."
Re: previous post. I think that ought to be 'Attic Shores,' not 'Arctic!' [Picture Michaelangelo dressed up in a heavy fur coat, shivering while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. : - ) ]
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