Buonasera tutti! Day 2 in Florence is just finishing up and
it has been pretty awesome. Once again, there is a lack of pictures (priceless
works of art + photos with flash = angry Italians), but I will once again give
you recommendations for things you should look up. But onward!
We started out this morning at the Church of Santa Croce,
which is beautiful. Plus, if your knees and shoulders aren’t covered, you have
to go around the corner and pay for a cover, which is basically a blue,
see-through, robe-type thing. So we had one girl who had to go and get that.
Pretty church is pretty.
Inside the church, we saw the graves of both Galileo and
Michelangelo.
Tomb of Michelangelo
Obviously, they are both very important people, and later on I
will have more information concerning Galileo in conjunction with the History
of Science course. We haven’t really done much with that yet, but the meat of
the course will be in Arezzo. Also at the Church of Santa Croce, there was the
grave of Machiavelli.
Then we saw the xenotaph of Dante. This means that he has a
grave marker, but that his body is actually buried elsewhere. The story is that
Dante gets exiled from his hometown of Florence because of his political
stance. After that, he writes the Divine Comedy (incidentally putting a lot of
people he was angry at in Hell) and makes those same people even more upset. In
the end, the leaders of Florence recognized his genius and ask him to come
back, to which he politely replies, ‘Screw you’. So he refuses to even be
buried in his hometown, having completely detached himself from both it and its
inhabitants. Therefore, he is buried outside of Florence.
True Story.
The church was built by the Franciscans and so there are
these little chapels detailing his life next to the altar, which was under
restoration. (We got a history lesson on the Franciscans and the Dominicans and
I already knew it all. Shout out the my Crusades professor and Faith Identity
class in high school!)
After Santa Croce, we went back to the same Panini shop as
yesterday, though today I got an actual panini (ham and cheese (It was okay))
and then we headed to the…guess. No really, I’ll give you a hint: It is one of
the most famous art galleries in the world. That’s right!! The Uffizi!
Inside the Uffizi (where no pictures can be taken), we saw a
whole lot of artwork that was beautiful. Look up the following.
The following:
- Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi
- Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus
- Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation
- Michelangelo’s The Holy Family
- Titian’s The Venus of Urbino
The Uffizi was great (of course) and afterwards we went to
Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, a Dominican church to look at the first known
occurrence of one-point perspective.
Cooler than that was the fact that we had
to walk through a graveyard to get to the church doors.
Which is legit.
Then we went to look for shoes for Elizabeth, whose sandal
had a zipper broken. Her new shoes were 10 Euro, so she got a good deal. Then we went across the
street for dinner (lasagna, roast beef?, and a chocolate brownie). Of course,
we had gelato before this. ^_^
Interesting Stories of the Day:
- At the Uffizi, Peter, one of the History of Science professors, noted a portrait of one of the great philosophers that was bashing astronomy during the time of Copernicus, leading to his development of the Copernican model as a defense of astronomy. One of the security guards listened as Peter explained the subject of this painting and when we were leaving, Professor Duclaux jokingly asked if anyone had ever talked about that particular portrait. With a disbelieving expression, he reported that no, no one ever had. Therefore, Peter was the first person through the Uffizi, seen by this guard, to dedicate time to talking about that painting.
- Also, at dinner, Melinda’s sunglasses spontaneously broke on her face, falling in her pasta. She proceeded to lick the sauce off and commented that her glasses were very tasty.
One more day in Florence and then onto Venice. Ciao!!
And the tomb of Rossini!
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