Cinque Terre

As a kind of breather in between Florence and Siena, we went to the Ligurian coast to the now famous Cinque Terre region.   These are five impossibly picturesque villages that cling to the mountains next to the sea.   I have a Michelin Green guide from the 1980's that gives a just very brief mention of the Cinque Terre region; today the five villages are a certified mass tourism destination, an  essential stop on the package tour of Italy, and the narrow little main streets resemble the corridors of the Uffizi, with tour groups from all over the world clogging the streets.  (I expected lots of Rick Steves-toting Americans, but not large tour groups from Japan.)  The five towns are not connected by road, but by a train line, built in 1874.  Riding the train is a bit like riding the subway at rush hour in New York!
But, like the Uffizi, if you make an effort, you can escape the crowds, and have a great time wondering the back streets. Or stairs, I should say, as the villages are perched on steep hillsides and rocks, and you go up and down stairs and alleys as you wander.  Everything is up and down.  The villages were constructed between the 12th and the 16th centuries, and are a testimony to the sheer ingenuity of the human constructive impulse.   It's hard to imagine how these villagers hauled the stones up to these impossibly inaccessible spots and created these little villages.  (Apparently they were defending themselves against pirates, among other things.)  And each village has its own little churches.

Postcard worthy views..

I can't help but mention that these pastel house colors are controlled by the local governments.

In addition to the villages, the rock formations and water are enticing.

The variety of structures within these towns is amazing; here's one sample.

Our second day, there was a big storm; huge waves and lots of wind, but no rain.

A 13th century church, with a window on the harbour.

A beautiful church in the town of Corniglia, where we stayed.

And you have to have drinks on a terrace watching the sunset!

In the train, on the way to Cinque Terre, we passed by Carrara and its quarries, the source of marble for Michelangelo and countless others since then. It's amazing to think that they have been getting stones from this mountain for more than 500 years.

Florence Part 4

Last, but not least, we visited two other main attractions in Florence.

Santa Croce is another Italian Gothic cathedral, noted for its frescoes.

I don't have a lot of words to describe all this, so here are some pictures:

These frescoes would appear to be simulating the decorative stones that we see in other churches.   Or else they are purely abstract art?

We also visited the Palazzo Pitti, which might more aptly be called the Palazzo Medici, since that is what it was.  (This would be later, in the post Renaissance years.)  It functions both as a museum of paintings and other things as well as a museum of how the palace looked.   The palace is decorated to the extreme; every square inch is ornamented excessively, almost to the point of nausea.   But it certainly reminds you of how wealthy the Medici were.

As a museum, the paintings are hung the way the Medici hung them, with no particular chronological order, and with paintings covering every square inch of the walls.   It doesn't do the paintings a lot of good, but it does make you think about how the Medici viewed them.   Even the frames can be distracting at times, like in this wonderful Raphael painting, intimate and sensitive, surrounded by a gilt monstrosity of a frame:

And there are all the other ornamental objects, including these kinds of tables made out of stones:

In short, Florence is an amazing city for viewing art made in Italy.  The experience of the mass tourist industry which has evolved around that art is something that must be put up with in order to see that art.   The next time I come, I'm coming in January!

Miscellaneous photographs:

I'm always looking for something colorful in the streets, especially amid the heavy and dark stones of Florence:

Spoons amuck?

I didn't realize they had an office in Florence, and that they were working with Mr. Machiavelli.   What a team!

Stoned in Florence

Today, among other things, we went to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, which was originally a workshop established by the Medici for creating inlaid stone work (like that in the Medici Chapels).  It is now a Museum devoted to the craft of creating images with stones.  The craftsmanship on display is astonishing, with tiny little fragments of different colored stones being used to create very realistic images.  Even Vera, who generally doesn't like anything "natural", was amazed.

This image, for example was creating only with stones:

Here is another, a landscape, with a lapis lazuli sky.

Here, a more primitive example:

In other cases, artists would take an existing stone as a kind of background and paint a few figures on them:

Upstairs, there was a display of the kinds of stones used; the Medici were obtaining precious stones from all over the world, although Italy itself is a major source for the stones.

Needless to say, there was virtually no one else there.   Who needs the Uffizi?

Lucca

We took a day trip to the town of Lucca.   While Lucca doesn't have the same overload of artistic treasures as Florence, it is a town which has its relatively intact medieval walls and something resembling its original streetscapes.  We enjoyed wandering around the town, and there were three wonderful old churches, all dating back to the 13th century.  One of the churches was even partially constructed with stones from a Roman amphitheater (Lucca was a Roman town, as well, and still features the original Roman street layout.)
Here is one church, with a peculiarly asymmetric facade:

Inside, a very decorative ceiling

And a tomb which spoke to me:

Another church:

And one with a mosaic facade:

We also wandered into the garden of a palazzo, where I got entranced by some bamboo.

Finally, on our return, I was able to admire the beautiful 1930's architecture of the train station, one of the few (only?) modern things in Florence.

Florence Part 3

We visited the Brancacci Chapel and the Uffizi museum.   The Brancacci Chapel, about 100 meters from our apartment, features frescoes done by Masaccio and others in the early 15th century.  It is truly amazing to see these frescoes in the place where the have been for the last 600 years or so!   The most famous part of the frescoes is the expulsion of Adam and Eve.

And a general view of the chapel:

We also went to the Uffizi Gallery.   While we saw some wonderful paintings there, especially the medieval ones, the experience in general was a nightmare.  Hordes of tour groups filled some of the rooms, completely blocking access to some paintings.   The Botticelli room was totally filled with selfie-stick wielding mobs; we didn't even venture in.    Given that more and more people in the world want to see these very famous images, you have to ask how can a museum deal with this trend.  (Call it the Mona Lisa syndrome.)  I have no good answers, but I do find it a very strange phenomenon.   The Uffizi is in the process of renovation and reorganization, so perhaps some of these problems can be alleviated.  And I suppose if you time your visit well, you can avoid some of the crowds.  

There was this angelic keyboard player:

And  I really love the color of the robes:

In general, I found the most satisfying experiences in Florence were in churches, where you see both the architecture and the paintings and frescoes as they were conceived.

Speaking of which, we visited the Duomo and the Baptistry, two of the other famous churches in Florence.  I love the gothic colored stones of the exterior, so different from the Northern Gothic.

and Giotto's campanile:

The interior is less decorated:

The Baptistry, next door, has an amazing ceiling of mosaics:

With some Bosch-like details:

I start to understand what the Stendhal Syndrome is all about...

From Wikipedia:

When he visited the Basilica of Santa Croce, where Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei are buried, he saw Giotto's frescoes for the first time and was overcome with emotion. He wrote:

I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.^[2]

Although psychiatrists have long debated whether it really exists, its effects on some sufferers are serious enough for them to require treatment in hospital and even antidepressants.^[3] The staff at Florence's Santa Maria Nuova hospital are accustomed to dealing with tourists suffering from dizzy spells and disorientation after admiring the statue of David, the masterpieces of the Uffizi Gallery and other treasures of the Tuscan city.^[4]

Even though there are many descriptions of people becoming dizzy and fainting while taking in Florentine art, especially at the aforementioned Uffizi in Florence, dating from the early 19th century on, the syndrome was only named in 1979, when it was described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, who observed and described more than 100 similar cases among tourists and visitors in Florence. There is no scientific evidence to define the Stendhal syndrome as a specific psychiatric disorder; on the other hand there is evidence that the same cerebral areas involved in emotional reactions are activated during the exposure to artworks.^[5]