October 25, 2010: What is the Church to Resident Ratio in this City?

Last night and this morning there were some serious thunderstorms with thunder so loud the windows were rattling. Luckily it was just a light rain by the time we left the house, and pretty much stayed like that throughout the day.

Our first stop today was the Church of Santa Croce, the centerpiece of the piazza we've found ourselves in time and time again. Inside the church is somewhat simple, but there are some heavy hitters buried here: Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Rossini (and 276 others). Dante also has a memorial here but the tomb is empty because he was banished from Florence before he died. Attached to the church is a famous Leather School, where they make all sorts of leather products (jackets, purses, wallets, leather-bound books, etc). It is set up so you can watch the guys working on the leather right in front of you, which we enjoyed. We saw someone put some gold-leaf initials on a wallet someone was purchasing and someone put the leather binding on a book, full of gold-leaf embellishments. However, the most exciting part was watching someone buy one of the purses. For 800 Euros. We just don't know people who do that. The leather felt absolutely amazing, but 800 Euros?! I want to know what else they bought on this trip.

From there, we walked just a few blocks away to Michelangelo's house. The house was actually built after he died and doesn't actually contain a lot of pieces made by Michelangelo (sounds like a tourist trap, eh?) but does have a couple of great pieces that we saw. There was one of his earliest sculptures (Battle of the Centaurs) which for anyone, let alone a teenager, is really amazing. Our guidebook says he kept this as part of his personal collection throughout his life. I hope he didn't have to move to often - a slab of marble has got to be hard to schlep around with you. There were some other sketches he made and another early sculpture he made, but not much beyond that.

We stopped for lunch and then continued on our tour. The next stop was another church - the Church of Santa Maria Novella. Standing at the back end of the church, you can see that it was designed to look larger than it is - the spacing between and the height of the columns changes as you go down the nave towards the altar. Its a pretty cool design effect until, of course, you're standing at the front of the church - when it looks smaller than it is. The other interesting things here were really elaborate frescoes in each of the small chapels surrounding the altar. Michelangelo even had his hand in some of the art here - when he was just 13 he painted some of the figures in one of the frescoes (and made his teacher jealous).

At this point we needed a sugar boost, so we went to find some gelato. It would be a while until any of the other sites were open, so we walked to the apartment to wait it out, and then went out again. To visit another - wait for it - church. We arrived at the Church of Annunziata. Through the main doors we found a great portico with etched glass ceiling panels. When we entered the sanctuary we found ourselves in an odd spot - at the back of the church, but all the pews were facing us - for some reason the back of this church is used as the front. A mass was just starting so we took a quick look and decided to come back when it was more appropriate to walk around. This church is very different than the others we've seen this week, so decided it was worth a second look even though our guidebook doesn't even mention it.

From there, we went to find a gelateria and restaurant recommended by a friend from my Italian class (thanks Jeff!). Since we already had gelato, we would make a point to stop by another day to get a scoop. The restaurant seemed closed on Mondays, so we also made a point to come by another night. During our search we found an area that looked oddly like it used to be a Roman Amphitheater, now just a residential area with an arena-like street grid. We remembered reading about this theater during our first day in Florence, and confirmed the street layout with Google maps. That was a cool discovery!

We ended up having dinner at a small restaurant where the food was good and the price looked right - but the portions were way too small. We left still feeling hungry, which is never a good thing. So, we got a follow-up dinner falafel to fill us up. Then we found a cafe near the duomo where we got some hot chocolate and read our books before heading back to our apartment.

Gelato Gusti per il Giorno:

Mike - Sesame e Santa Maria Trinita (marzapan and nutella)

Aviva - Sesame (you can see it quickly made it up the ranks)

To see some pictures from today, click here.