Visiting Florence

 

Visible from everywhere in and around the city: the Florence Duomo and Baptistery

“The single most compelling reason for coming here is to see Florentine Art” [Rupert Scott]. That’s certainly why I set out to visit Florence, although closely linked to the art is to think about the economic and social circumstances that enabled such art to be created.

Not all Florentine

This visit involved staying in Fiesole, and so it made sense to visit the archaeological site and museum. This wasn’t Florentine art, but Etruscan temples and, astonishingly, a 2,000- or 3,000-capacity amphitheatre (the figures depend on which guidebook you read). Nor was the Pitti all Florentine – it included a vast collection of ancient sculpture. Nonetheless, Florence is perhaps unique in the world for being able to have several collections, not to speak of churches, containing art created locally. 

Guide books

Any visitor to a major city will be aided, or hindered, by several guidebooks. I focused on two:

The Touring Club of Italy Guida d’Italia (known as the Guida Rossa), volume on Florence, all of 911 pages. This book provides the essential dates and attributions for pretty much everything you can view in Florence, up to around 1945 (the station is mentioned, as is the airport, from 1986, but the guide is not really intended for the modern buildings). It tells you who did what in exhaustive detail, very occasionally awards a star rating (the Pitti, overall, gets a star). Everything is there, if you can find it.

Florence, a walking guide to the architecture (Richard Goy, 2015) – Goy tells you openly this guide provides an English-language version of the best Italian guides, but nonetheless I was disappointed that he frequently repeats the Guida Rossa text without comment. He uses a lot of architectural terms without explaining them, although he provides a glossary of Italian terms, such as “duomo”. There are good reference photos, although not in situ with the text where they are mentioned. All in all, this is a lost opportunity: Florence should be the dream city for illustrated walks.

As often happens, while there I discovered two much more interesting tours:

Rupert Scott, Florence Explored (1987) – this was a real find. A short, opinionated book looking only at a few major works. But this is its strength, because in Italian cities it is so easy to get bogged down in trying to identify everything you are looking at. There is simply too much to see. Scott includes some good quotes from Ruskin, below:

Ruskin, Mornings in Florence (1875– 77) - this was such a contrast to the boring guidebooks. You may intensely dislike what he says, but his text is compelling, and it is clear he has looked at what he describes! Confronted by the amazing Ghirlandaio frescoes in Sta Maria Novella, he is dismissive: “it is all simply – good for nothing … Ghirlandaio was to the end of his life a mere goldsmith”.

Does it make any difference if you see something or not?

As usual, many of the things I came to see were not visible. The Masaccio Trinity was being restored, but for an additional €1.50 you could see parts of it through the scaffolding. In truth, however, for many of the works, you recognise they are there, but you learn about them at home, when you can see them in reproduction much more clearly. Ruskin, of course, would fume at reading this.

Highs and Lows

The low point was visiting the Pitti Palace. It contains an art collection of the top rank, yet it was almost impossible to see any of it. First, all the art was displayed in 19th-century style, with pictures piled on top of each other. Result: you couldn’t see the ones at the top. Secondly, and much worse, the pictures remain in situ from how they must have looked when the Medici last inhabited the Palace. Captioning information is out of date or simply missing. Third, and most important, the lighting came from large windows that meant there was a lot of glare on the pictures, making them either too dark to view, or with too much reflection to be intelligible. The impression I came away with from the Pitti was overwhelmingly one of grotesque tastelessness – room after room of 17th, 18th- and 19th-century ostentation, displaying wealth but little taste. In these surroundings, no painting could survive.

The Pitti collection should be entirely rehung in a better, and separate, environment for conservation and for viewing. The state rooms could I imagine be filled up with plenty of art from the store – paintings by the yard, as it were.

Tips for visitors

“The single most compelling reason for coming here is to see Florentine Art” [Rupert Scott]. That’s certainly why I set out to visit Florence, although closely linked to the art is to think about the economic and social circumstances that enabled such art to be created.

Not all Florentine

This visit involved staying in Fiesole, and so it made sense to visit the archaeological site and museum. This wasn’t Florentine art, but Etruscan temples and, astonishingly, a 2,000- or 3,000-capacity amphitheatre (the figures depend on which guidebook you read). Nor was the Pitti all Florentine – it included a vast collection of ancient sculpture. Nonetheless, Florence is perhaps unique in the world for being able to have several collections, not to speak of churches, containing art created locally. 

Guide books

Any visitor to a major city will be aided, or hindered, by several guidebooks. I focused on two:

The Touring Club of Italy Guida d’Italia (known as the Guida Rossa), volume on Florence, all of 911 pages. This book provides the essential dates and attributions for pretty much everything you can view in Florence, up to around 1945 (the station is mentioned, as is the airport, from 1986, but the guide is not really intended for the modern buildings). It tells you who did what in exhaustive detail, very occasionally awards a star rating (the Pitti, overall, gets a star). Everything is there, if you can find it.

Florence, a walking guide to the architecture (Richard Goy, 2015) – Goy tells you openly this guide provides an English-language version of the best Italian guides, but nonetheless I was disappointed that he frequently repeats the Guida Rossa text without comment. He uses a lot of architectural terms without explaining them, although he provides a glossary of Italian terms, such as “duomo”. There are good reference photos, although not in situ with the text where they are mentioned. All in all, this is a lost opportunity: Florence should be the dream city for illustrated walks.

As often happens, while there I discovered two much more interesting tours:

Rupert Scott, Florence Explored (1987) – this was a real find. A short, opinionated book looking only at a few major works. But this is its strength, because in Italian cities it is so easy to get bogged down in trying to identify everything you are looking at. There is simply too much to see. Scott includes some good quotes from Ruskin, below:

Ruskin, Mornings in Florence (1875– 77) - this was such a contrast to the boring guidebooks. You may intensely dislike what he says, but his text is compelling, and it is clear he has looked at what he describes! Confronted by the amazing Ghirlandaio frescoes in Sta Maria Novella, he is dismissive: “it is all simply – good for nothing … Ghirlandaio was to the end of his life a mere goldsmith”.

Does it make any difference if you see something or not?

As usual, many of the things I came to see were not visible. The Masaccio Trinity was being restored, but for an additional €1.50 you could see parts of it through the scaffolding. In truth, however, for many of the works, you recognise they are there, but you learn about them at home, when you can see them in reproduction much more clearly. Ruskin, of course, would fume at reading this.

Highs and Lows

The low point was visiting the Pitti Palace. It contains an art collection of the top rank, yet it was almost impossible to see any of it. First, all the art was displayed in 19th-century style, with pictures piled on top of each other. Result: you couldn’t see the ones at the top. Secondly, and much worse, the pictures remain in situ from how they must have looked when the Medici last inhabited the Palace. Captioning information is out of date or simply missing. Third, and most important, the lighting came from large windows that meant there was a lot of glare on the pictures, making them either too dark to view, or with too much reflection to be intelligible. The impression I came away with from the Pitti was overwhelmingly one of grotesque tastelessness – room after room of 17th, 18th- and 19th-century ostentation, displaying wealth but little taste. In these surroundings, no painting could survive.

The Pitti collection should be entirely rehung in a better, and separate, environment for conservation and for viewing. The state rooms could I imagine be filled up with plenty of art from the store – paintings by the yard, as it were.

Tips for visitors

• Fiesole is a good place to stay when visiting Florence. It is much quieter than the centre, and has its own (rather contrasting) appeal.
• The Uffizi becomes quieter during the afternoons, unexpectedly.
• Allow twenty minutes to find the entrance to the Uffizi, quite apart from buying the tickets.
• The archaeological museum is a well-kept secret, full of Etruscan remains from across Tuscany.
• Trying to cross the historic central area is a slow and exhausting process. There are tiny electric buses, which defy credibility in squeezing through impossibly small alleyways alongside tourists and parked cars – and they take almost as long as walking as they have to follow a circuitous route.  The tram, where available , is a great bonus.
• Booking for restaurants is usually necessary.