Florence Part 5: Assorted locations

Ponte Vecchio
The first and therefore oldest b ridge in the city. Built in wood before the year 1000, then constructed in masonry and destroyed several times by the Arno in flood, it was reconstructed as we see it today by Taddeo Gaddi, a student of Giotto, in 1345. The characteristic shops on the bridge at first hosted butchers’ shops, as here they could conveniently throw their waste directly into the river, and were only later occupied by craftsmen, goldsmiths and jewelers, when the bridge became the main route leading to the Medici palace. Today it is a popular salon for jewelry and precious stones, displayed in the characteristic projecting shop windows.

Piazza della Signoria
The piazza has been the hub of political life in Florence since the 14th century. It was the scene of great triumphs, such as the return of the Medici in 1530, but also of the Bonfire of the Vanities instigated by Savonarola, who was himself burned at the stake here in 1498, denounced as a heretic by the Inquisiton.


NO PICTURES!
NO PICTURES!!

Many, well, most of the museaums in Florence do not allow photography. The following places we visited did not allow photography. But I managed to sneak a few. When we went to the Accademia to see David the guard near the statue was always yelling at the top of her lungs NO PICTURES!

The Academy Gallery
One of Florence’s best known museums because it boasts many sculptures by Michelangelo, including the famous David. It also contains a large number of paintings, brought here by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo to help the studies of the young artists at the Academy of Art, which still stands next door to the gallery.

San Marco
The museum of San Marco is situated inside the ancient Dominican convent, the spiritual centre of 15th century Florence, and contains the splendid frescoes carried out by Fra Angelico to decorate the monks’ cells. This was where the mad monk Fra Girolamo Savonarola preached.

Uffizi Gallery
Situated in the harmonious colonnaded square designed by Vasari, a symbol of 16th century Florentine architecture, the Uffizi Gallery was also the first museum to be opened to the public: the Grand Duke in fact gave permission for visitors to tour it from the year 1591. Its four centuries of history make the Uffizi Gallery the oldest museum in the world. Cosimo I de Medici commissioned Giorgio Vasari to build the Palace, whose construction was started in 1560. It was later completed by Buontalenti, who also designed the famous Tribune, to house the administrative offices (or Uffizi) of the Government, because Palazzo Vecchio, which also over looks Piaza della Signoria, had become to small to hold them all.

However it was Cosimo’s son Francesco I who was responsible for the palace’s gradual transformation into a museum from 1581, when he closed the Gallery on the second floor with hu8ge windows and arranged part of the Grand Ducal collection of classical statues, medals, jeweler, weapons, paintings and scientific instruments there.

Untiring collectors, the Medici were forever adding to the Gallery: some of the most important elements in the collection came from the legacy left by Vittoria della Rovere, Ferdinando II’s mother, in 1631, together with the many acquisitions made by Cardinal Leopoldo de’Medici, which were to create the basis of the Gallery of Prints and Drawings and the collection of self-portraits, today displayed in the Vasri Corridor that links the Uffizi to the royal Pitti Palace.

Altered and rearranged several times over the centuries, the exhibition rooms are now composed of over 45 rooms containing about 1700 paintings, 300 sculptures, 46 tapestries and 14 pieces of furniture and/or ceramics. In actual fact the Uffizi owns about 4800 works, the raminder of which are either in storage or on loan to other museums.

The Church of San Lorenzo and library
Brunelleschi carried out the Medici Church of San Lorenzo by enlarging a mediaeval church consecrated by St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan in 393. The interior exemplifies Renaissance religious architecture and contains many important works of art, among them two pulpits in bronze by Donatello and the Old Sacristy by Brunelleschi. The church became a Medici family sepulcher because all the first Medicis were buried there. Michelangelo carried out the elegant Medici Laurentian Library, vestibule and reading room, which can be reached from the Cloisters.

The Medici Chapels
The Medici Chapels form the most famous part of the San Lorenzo complex. Pope Leo X and his cousin, the future Pope Clement VII gave Michelangelo the commission to carry out the New Sacristy, where Lorenzo the Magnificent is buried with his brother Giuliano, who were murdered in the Pazzi Plot in 1478, and their descendants, Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours. Michelangelo decorated it with some of his most famous sculptures: portraits of the dead princes and his interpretations of Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk. The huge octagonal Chapel of the Princes, designed by Mateo Nigetti is the official family sacrarium and mausoleum. The entire surface of the interior is a dazzling mosaic of dark marble and semi-precious stones.