Palazzo Vecchio and Brancacci Chapel - part 1

Sunday 8/24/08
Yes, of course I realize that this is Sarah's birthday. I will talk more about that in another posting. Right now I would like to talk about what Sarah and I did before the birthday festivities. First of all, like I had all week, I woke up extra early (around 6 am without an alarm clock, can you imagine?) to watch some Olympic excitement. It seemed like the only time that good sporting events were on without being constantly interrupted by the panels of "experts" that just wanted to talk for hours about some Italian judo competitor who didn't make it to the medal round, was early in the morning.

Around 10:30am, after watching the U.S. men's teams win the indoor volleyball and basketball gold medals, Sarah and I began the arduous 0.05 mile trek to the Palazzo Vecchio which serves as Florence's town hall.


It was begun in 1299 and has changed names over the years as the leadership of Florence has changed. First it was the Palazzo della Signoria (it's in the Piazza della Signoria) after the Signoria which was the ruling body of the Florentine Republic. It was also called the Palazzo del Popolo (people), Palazzo del Priori (the priori were the nine members of the Signoria), and Palazzo Ducale (for the Duke of Florence after the fall of the Republic). Finally, after the Medici dukes moved into the Palazzo Pitti across the Arno, it became known as the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace).


This is the main chamber called the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred), which was built under the direction of Savonarola who sent the Medici into exile and was later excommunicated and executed in the Piazza Signoria.


The walls of the Salone are covered by huge frescoes of Florentine victories over Siena and Pisa. One of them, seen above, is said to be covering up an unfinished work by Leonardo da Vinci called The Battle of Anghiari. One of Sarah's professors, Dr. Rab Hatfield, and an Italian expert in high-technology art analysis, Maurizio Seracini, are working to prove that it is under the fresco. Obviously no one wants to remove the late 16th century frescoes unless they know for sure what is under them. Professor Hatfield wrote a book called Finding Leonardo that makes a case for recovering Leonardo's painting.


Sarah looks up at one of the lavishly decorated rooms.


The Studiolo of Francesco I (named for Francesco I de'Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany) is covered by 34 paintings.


I believe that this was the chapel of Eleanora of Toledo who was the wife of Cosimo I de'Medici, making her the Duchess of Tuscany.


This shield in the corner shows Eleanora's coat of arms, including the balls of the Medici family that can be seen all over Tuscany.


This is Cosimo il Vecchio (the Elder), not to be confused with Cosimo Primo (the First). He was the first of the Medici political dynasty. Cosimo I de'Medici (1519-1574) was the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cosimo il Vecchio's father Giovanni di Bicci de'Medici (1360-1429) was the first to enter banking on his own and be influential in Florentine politics. But it was Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464) that became the unofficial head of the Florentine Republic.


This is The Hall of Geographical Maps. It was also called the Wardrobe and was where the Medici kept their precious belongings.


The 53 maps on the walls (like this one of Italy) were painted by a Dominican monk and show the knowledge of geography in the 16th century. The huge globe in the center of the room was ruined by too many restoration attempts.


This is where giant elephants live and play.


This is a medieval bathroom.


When you gotta go, you gotta go.


This stairway is guarded by a vicious saramonster that lives in a hole in the ceiling.

8/7/08 to 8/21/08

That's right. It's another boring, no pictures post. This is just stuff that happened between the trips to Rome and Assisi.

Thursday 8/7
Today I went back to I Tatti for my first day of work while the library is closed for the month of August. I soon learned that, even though it's closed, there are still fellows that come in to research. And of course the employees are there working, except for those that are on vacation. So basically I Tatti is only closed to Sarah and her people. Those lowly grad students.
After I got home from work someone rang our buzzer. Sarah said we should ignore it. We later found out that it was Lara and her sister Megan who were locked out of Casa LSD. Stephanie was in the States and Dan was in Spain and Lara had no way to contact her landlord. Oh, and her friends weren't answering their door. I blame Sarah. Luckily they found us a little later when we ventured out to buy some groceries. I lent them my phone and we parted ways. They showed up later though, since they still couldn't get ahold of their landlord. So we watched the Forsyte Saga and Lara and Megan used the absent Kellin's bedroom.

Friday 8/8
I worked again today, and Lara was able to get into her apartment. This was very important since I met Sarah at LSD after work so that we could watch the openning ceremonies of the Olympics. In celebration of the Beijing Olympic games we ate Chinese food for dinner.

Saturday 8/9
Today began my fourteen days of spending every waking moment (while not working) sitting in front of the tv watching the Olympics. Well, from early morning until about four o'clock that is. That is when the games were covered here. It also began my immense frustration over the terrible job the Italian tv networks do of covering the Olympics.
I did take a break from television watching to go over to LSD for a dinner party featuring Sarah, Dan, Clark, Analia, Earl, and I and later Lara and Megan. Good times. Unfortunately it was quite hot this evening, even when we got home around 1:30 am.

Sunday 8/10
Watched terrible Olympic coverage and the terrible movie Failure to Launch. Really terrible.

Monday 8/11
I work at I Tatti Monday through Thursday, so I'm not going to bother mentioning it anymore. After work Sarah, Sarah D., her cousin, Kellin, Sean, Lara, Megan, Dan, Clark, and I went out to dinner at Za Za which was good but quite expensive. That's kind of how most things are here in Florence. Afterwards some of us went to House of Sizzle to be entertained by Francesco and for more Olympic coverage.

I'm going to skip ahead a few days because every day involved watching Olympics, soccer, and dinners.

Friday 8/15
Today was Ferragosto. I don't think that's how it's spelled but I don't care. I think it's kind of a dumb idea. This "holiday" marks the middle of August. Yay! So everything that wasn't already closed for the month of August in Italy was actually closed today. Better buy your groceries ahead of time. I think that the dumbest thing about it is that everyone leaves. We saw on tv that all the highways leading north to the rest of Europe were packed and at stand-stills. Actually, that went on most of the month. That's what happens when you encourage an entire nation to leave at the exact same time. Hmmmm.
Well, we stayed. It turned out to be a really nice day. It rained for a very short time around 8 am and was nice and cool the rest of the day. Sarah thought it was cold. It was a great break from the usually unbreakable heat. There was a nice breeze and the rain came back off and on al evening. There was even some hail. Could this day get any better? Yes! Along with the usually non-stop coverage of Olympic fencing, cycling, judo, and rowing, they actually showed diving, volleyball, and track and field events. Things we actually like. I really don't understand the Italians obsession with fencing and cycling. That's usually all they show. Unlike in America where there are seven stations showing non-stop coverage, here they have one network that shows a little bit of crappy sports and then spends way too much time talking about it. That's all they do is talk and not show highlights. It was infuriating. There were fantastic things going on and they would have a panel talking for hours on end. Sorry. I was not happy.

Saturday 8/16
There was more Olympic watching in the morning. Sarah and I broke the monotany by going for an athletic power walk (not to be confused with Olympic speed walking - those people are hilarious) across the river, up to the Piazza Michelangelo, past San Miniato, around this long hill-top road (sometimes called Viale Galileo and sometimes Viale Niccolo Machiavelli), back across the river, west through Cascine Park, and back home. I haven't tracked it on Google map's pedometer, but it was almost ten miles, much of it uphill.

Sunday 8/17
Thankfully the showing of sports I like continued, but there was still way too much time wasted on panel's of "experts" (who happen to be experts on every sport) opinions. Sarah, Lara, Megan, Dan, Sarah D., and I went to Tijuana for dinner then back to Sarah's place to watch An Affair to Remember. After mixed drink specials at Tijuana and wine and grappa at Sarah's, I was a little inebriated. Well, not a little. I still made it to work early the next day, as I do every day.

Tuesday 8/19
Today was my first day of working in the archives at I Tatti with the archivist Ilaria Della Monica. And...
Wednesday 8/20
I got a ride home from Eve Borsook. Well almost home. A couple of bridges away, which is way better than taking the bus. Plus, in walking home I discovered a great bar called the J. Joyce. Eve Borsook is a very well known art historian who moved to Italy from the United States in 1952.

I'm going to stop there for right now. Not very exciting stuff, but I figured I should let people know what's going on. I know that it looks like we go out to eat and drinking at dinner parties every other day, but that's usually not the case. This posting happened to include a number of dinner parties, but that is not the norm, unfortunately. The vast majority of our days see me working at I Tatti, Sarah and Kellin working all day on presentations and research, a small but tastey dinner at home, and more studying. It just so happens that days like that don't make for very exciting reading. So now I am beginning to prepare some more postings with pictures. Hopefully one of these days I will catch up and not be writing about things that happened a month ago. Later.

Assisi - part 3

Once again I really don't have much to say about these pictures. We did't see a lot of big name works of art or landmarks (other than the church). Most of these pictures are just showing the beauty of Assisi. Prepare to be amazed by my ridiculously awesome photography skills.

Now that I say that I can't remember why I took this one. I think that I just liked the building. It is such a charming town. It looks like an ideal place to live, except for the swarms of tourists. Sometimes I wonder about the people that do live in these Italian towns and I think it would be almost like living in Disney World.

Another church. I don't know which one it was. It's not St. Francis's church. And if it's not St. Francis's church I don't give a rat's ass. Sorry. I was paraphrasing a line from tv.

Here's one leaning building.

A view of Assisi from the hilltop above.

The road back to the train station. They stuffed people into the buses that ran back and forth every half hour.

Another leaning building. My dad just mentioned that they got hit by an earthquake recently. A couple of people were killed in St. Francis's church when part of the roof collapsed during an aftershock. Sarah knew about it too and pointed out the damaged ceiling when we were inside. Of course, we weren't allowed to take pictures.

I liked the fact that this visiting friar was in line for pizza like everyone else.

I also like the little tree that was growing above one of the gates out of town.

And that is all from Assisi. I think we might have another chance to go with Sarah's school. Maybe then I'll take some pictures in the basilica and get her class kicked out. We'll see.

Assisi - part 2

As I mentioned in my last post Assisi was built on a hillside. As a result the town is a little difficult to get around. The beginning of this posting is just going to show what it is like. Since we spent most of our time walking around and exploring, this post will show you why we were so tired by the end of the day. You'd better feel sorry for me. That's all I want.


Up, down, or restaurant.


You'd have to be pretty fit to live in Assisi.








Even though it was difficult to get around it was definitely worth it. The town is beautiful. Everywhere you turn there's another picture opportunity.


I waited at the bottom of these steps for quite a while to take this picture. Every time the last person was almost out of view, someone new would round the corner.





Eventually Sarah guided me up towards the top of the hill.


But on the way up Sarah felt compelled to add her gum to the growing collection.


We decided not to go in to the castle because it was pricey and Sarah said that there's not really much to see inside. We decided to have lunch in some of the shade that it provided. We packed our lunches at Sarah's suggestion. It's not a bad place to have a brown bag lunch. The view certainly was nice.


Sarah surveys her territory.


There aren't too many bad views from the top of the hill.


Sarah's still surveying her lands.

Assisi - part 1

Friday 8/22
Sarah and I once again got up a little early and made our way to the Santa Maria Novella train station. We got there in time to catch the 8:09 train to Assisi. The trip was pretty uneventful. I think I just listened to music and stared out the window most of the time. We arrived at the train station which is actually in the nearby town of Santa Maria degli Angeli. From there we had to buy bus passes and take the bus up the hill to Assisi. The bus was packed. There's only one reason people get off at this station. Everyone goes up to Assisi. And they were all on our bus.


As you can see, Assisi is built on a hill. To the left you can see the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, or St. Francis of Assisi.


It is a huge church and is the mother church of the Franciscan Order. It has an upper and lower church which were begun in 1228, along with the Franciscan monastery.


Of course the bus doesn't take you all the way up there. It drops you off at the base of the hill. You have to work your way up. I soon learned that this is one tough city to get around. Well, I suppose it's not too bad if you are going to one specific location, but we went up and down all day long. Very tiring. Assisi's residents must have buns of steel.


The complex includes the churches (one right on top of the other) and the friary. Bathrooms are to the right and cost 50 cents. Euro cents that is.


Unfortunately they do not allow you to take any pictures. I thought about sneaking a few but was afraid of the mean looks Sarah was giving me. I saw a couple of other ne'er-do-wells taking pictures so I gave them mean looks too. This is the gothic upper basilica. My pictures would have been better.


This is part of the lower basilica.


This is the tomb of St. Francis. I really wanted to get a picture of this. I couldn't find any really good images of it. There was no talking allowed down here. It was like the Sistine Chapel where, every few minutes when the people start getting bolder and louder with their whispering, a voice comes from above saying, "Silence."


This is the view of Assisi from the church. They have bushes that say PAX (peace) and one above it showing the T-shaped cross of St. Francis. They sell these crosses in about 300 shops around town. I wanted one but Sarah already had one. Apparently I need to find an original key chain.


That's Sarah not looking at the valley below Assisi. Somewhere out there is a train station.


This oratory was set up in the basement of St. Francis's birthplace. It used to be a draper's shop, but was turned into the oratory in the 1200s.

Rome - day 3 - part 3 and day 4

The rest of our Tuesday in Rome continued after we left the Capitoline Museum.


Not far from the museum we came upon perhaps the loveliest fountain in all of Rome. Well, not really, but it did the job. In most places I have been in my life I probably would not have considered drinking from something that looked like this. But in Italy it is quite normal, and necessary when you don't want to pay for a bottle of water everywhere you go.


We walked past Trajan's Column once again on our way to our next bus. The column was built in 113 and has a spiraling relief depicting Trajan's victory over the Dacians. It was right around the column that I found Sarah's group when I came to join her in Italy when she was with her SCAD group. I was walking along the crowded streets of Rome with no way to contact her when a girl whom I barely knew saw me and called out to me. It was quite lucky that she recognized me because I probably wouldn't have found Sarah until her group returned to their hotel that evening.


We took another bus south and out past the gates of Rome. From there we walked a while until we found the entrance to the San Domitilla Catacombs. We were quite unhappy to find out that the catacombs were closed (despite their posted hours of operation), but Sarah reminded me that there were two other catacombs in the area. So we walked even further until we reached the San Sebastiano Catacombs. We had to wait a while until an English speaking tour was going down, and when we finally did we learned that we were the only ones in the tour group whose first language was English. Some people were translating what the tour guide said to others in their group. Even our tour guide spoke very shaky English. But it was really cool. Literally. I thought it felt very good while Sarah was cold. We weren't allowed to take pictures down there, but I don't think that pictures would have done the catacombs justice. And the catacombs demand justice. The tour was pretty short, and unfortunately we had to stick to the path and couldn't wander off on our own. Actually, it's probably a good thing because we would have surely gotten lost.


On our way back to our bus stop we passed the old Appian Way, perhaps the most important ancient Roman road. It led down to the southeast of Italy. But we were going north.


Above the catacombs was the church of San Sebastiano. Saint Sebastian was martyred when Diocletian was persecuting the Christians in the 3rd century. He was tied to a post and shot with arrows but the arrows didn't kill him. So they killed him with a club.


This is one of the arrows that is said to have struck Sebastian.


The church also has a stone that supposedly has the footprints of Jesus in them.


The bus was absolutely packed full of people so we decided to get off a little early and walked the rest of the way north. We stopped at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore to check it out. It wasn't on Sarah's list, but there was something going on and there were tons of people there. It was packed inside as you can see. We'll have to return some time because it looked really interesting.


Cardinal Bernard Francis Law was speaking at the church. He was the troublemaker causing all the hooplah. We left and took it easy back at our hotel.

Wednesday 8/6/08

This is the Flann O'Brien Pub where we once again ate breakfast. It's actually pretty large and has a big back room that we never saw anyone in.


Our only mission of the day was to go to the Galleria Borghese in the Villa Borghese. Sarah had to make reservations in advance for this one. We arrived early and sat around for quite a while before it was our time to go in. Sarah's group from SCAD had come here also but were turned away either because it was closed or they didn't have reservations. I forget which was the case. Anyway, it has a lot of paintings and sculptures, but we were most impressed by the marble sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini such as Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpina.


After we left the museum we wondered around the immense Villa Borghese gardens. Sarah really wanted to rent one of the vehicles seen above but we never found out where the rental station was. We just kept seeing people in their peddled cars mocking us with their happiness.


After we walked fifty miles through the gardens we passed back through the old walls into the city. We passed a Hard Rock Cafe on the beautiful Via Vittorio Veneto. It looked so inviting that we couldn't pass it up. After an exhausting, very hot week we relaxed in the air conditioning, had English-speaking waiters, and American style bathrooms. The food was great. We absolutely stuffed ourselves on the typical American portions that are way more than one person needs in a meal. The only reminder that we were in Italy was the fact that our waiter was nowhere to be found for about forty minutes while my drink sat empty on the table. An empty chalice is a lonely chalice. I thought about just leaving, but he finally showed up.
From there I ran back to the Flan to get our bags that we had left at the pub while Sarah went to the train station to get our tickets. We were cutting it close on time and didn't want to have to wait for the next train. We made it in plenty of time.


We took the Eurostar at 5:55. It was bound for Bologna and Trieste, but we decided to get off in Florence. We'll have to check out Trieste another time. We just relaxed, listened to music, and read on our speedy train. Above, Sarah works on her blog. I only jotted down a few notes for my condensed version.