Travel: Florence, Italy
Tricks of the eye
In Florence, what you see may not be what you get. In fact, Florence had pulled a number on me but I’m not complaining.
The city lay spread out at my feet, looking more than a trifle dull in the mid-morning haze. I am
on Piazzale Michelangelo, atop a hill on the south bank of the River Arno, looking down on Florence.
Standing beside me, ubiquitous catapult clutched in one magnificent fist, is David. He’s looking down on the city, too. Oxidisation has turned his splendid bronze statue more than a little green but that does not take away from the hunk David is.
Two hours into my Florence trawl, I’m wondering if it’s a case of great expectations.
My guidebook quotes liberally from known names, all drooling. Thomas Mann: If you allow glory to make you soft, indifferent, you have lost Florence. Nathaniel Hawthorne: I believe that no place could be found where life passes more delightfully than Florence. Someone called Gabriel Faure:
Florence was equal to my dreams.
The very anti-thesis of my emotions, alas. What am I missing here, I wonder.
The queues outside the Uffizi gallery are six-deep and I decide, regretfully, to give it a miss. I take
a long, leisurely walk through the winding cobbled streets of the city, dodging the African merchants of fake designer watches and handbags.
The sun is dappled at the Piazza Della Signoria where stand the statues of Medusa, the Sabines, Cosimo the elder, the awesome Neptune himself in the centre of a still-functioning aquaduct.
Here, too, I come upon David, a faithful replica of the statue housed inside the Galleria Dell Accademia. The sun slants across this David, cutting him in half at an interesting angle; is it my imagination or does he look rueful?
No Italian city is complete without its very own magnificent cathedral and in Florence, the
Duomo, the Santa Maria del Fiore, rules. It is the fourth largest church in the world. Brunelleschi’s work is throat-catchingly beautiful here, the snowy Carrera marble melding with the Prato green and Maremma pink.
Moorish, Flemish, Gothic, Byzantine influences all show up in this cathedral, and the frescos are, indeed, stunning. To one side of the domed church stands the gleaming golden
door of the venerable Baptistry of San Giovanni.
Inside the cool, hushed environs of the Galleria Della Accademia stands the real David. Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Large, white,brooding, he throws an instant net of enthrallment
on the viewer. His face is calm and reflective on one side of the profile; move to the other
side and you will see furrows of anxiety etched onto his other brow. The hand that curls on the sling is a thing of resplendent beauty, each knuckle joint etched clearly.
I am in love. With David. And I don’t want to leave this place.
However, being part of a tourist group has its own compulsions and I am back in the piazza
soon. I recall later that inside the gallery, to one side, are Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures, a poignant tribute to what might have been.
However, everything else in Florence is an anticlimax after David. I gaze at the asymmetrical exteriors of the Palazzo Vecchio; I stroll in the elaborately laid-out Boboli Gardens. I wander the Ponte Vecchio in a daze, looking into the tiny jewellery shops and observing all the locks
on the bridge.
The Vecchio Bridge was constructed by Romans and is the only bridge that wasn’t destroyed by the Nazis during their withdrawal from Italy in 1944. The traditional take is that lovers attach locks onto the railings of the bridge and throw the keys into the Arno to forever seal their love.
Should I buy a lock and key in memory of the alabaster David?
Firenze, established by Julius Caesar himself, known for being the epicentre of art and
creativity, truly the Renaissance City. The fabled land of the Medicis. Galileo lived here.
Dante was sent into exile from here. Savonarola was hanged here. Why, even Pinocchio belonged to Florence!
I’m still in somnolent mode, though I do perk up a bit when examining some truly superior leather,
and a few shops with some even better hand-made paper. Then, I come upon more hordes of tourista. The magic vanishes.
I really don’t know about Florence. Apart from David, I didn’t find much to rave about. Not even
the famous wine of the region, the Crima Christi, made up for this ennui.
And that was pretty much what I told disbelieving friends and family back home. Then, I developed
my photograph of the city from atop the Piazzale Michelangelo.
Photo: Sheila Kumar
I looked at it. And looked again. The photograph showed a city of indescribable beauty that shone in the morning light.
Florence had pulled a number on me but I’m not complaining. You see, my guidebook also had this quote from Mark Twain: “In the valley lay Florence, pink, gray and brown…this is the most beautiful image on the planet.” And I realised, late in the day, that he had got it right!
This ran in THE HINDU of 3 Aug 2008.
Links to my other Italy articles:
Travel: Just One Place….
Travel: The places and pottery connect
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Sheila Kumar • August 3, 2003