I got a call before going down to breakfast that the ladies wanted to go to a church service at the Duomo, and was it okay if we got a late start? I asked if they wanted one in English or Italian and read off the times the Duomo holds Mass. They opted for the English one at 10am. I received the good word that they indeed had been seated the night before at Il Latini with minimal issue and they ate too much. They didn't see what the big deal was about the place and it was full of tourists, exactly as I had anticipated. Screw you, Rachel Ray. The place is a victim of years of too much promotion and what had been a good “locals” restaurant is now a shadow of what once was. Damned tourists (kidding!)
They went to Mass and I met them outside afterward. We walked back by way of the Basilica of Santa Croce, where we stopped in and I showed them the cloisters designed by Brunellschi (who designed the giant dome of the Duomo), the tombs of Michelangelo, Rossini, Galileo, Machiavelli, Dante, Ghiberti, Marconi and Fermi. Important works of art include funerary monuments by Luca and Andrea della Robbia, Canova, Vasari and Donatello, frescoes by Giotto and the cross by Cimabue was almost lost in the massive city-wide flood of 1966.
Out in the courtyard piazza I showed them the plaques on the wall listing the height of the floodwaters (or to be more accurate – the mud line) at 22 feet high. The damages from the flood reached northward past the Duomo (over a mile away) and all the way past the Accademia and the Monastery of San marco almost 2 kilometers away. Not only were 1.5 million books and manuscripts in the National Library and National Archives immersed in mud, heating oil, sewage and riverwater, but hundreds of paintings and frescoes in the storerooms of the vast de Medici storerooms of the Palazzo Pitti south of the river and the just north of the river at the Uffizi museum in the basement. Illuminated manuscripts were almost lost in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo to the north. Yeah, and more than five thousand families were homeless. It took decades to restore the works of art and the manuscripts through the aid of volunteers from around the world.
We made our way to the Basilica of Santo Spirito, designed by Brunellschi in the early 15th century (to rebuild the 13th century original destroyed in a fire.) There are 38 side chapels in this church – whoo!
From there we hopped to the Carmine church to see the Capella Brancacci, considered the Sistine Chapel of the early renaissance, for the fresco cycle by Masaccio, Masolino and Lippi. The frescoes of Masacchio are some of the earliest works bridging the medieval and early renaissance, using mathematical components for perspective and chiaroscuro for two dimensional figures, rather than flat figural painting that had been the norm for centuries.
We picked up a taxi and headed north into the hills to Fiesole for lunch at Enoteca Pinchiorri and a beautiful view of Florence below us.
Dinner was a place of my choosing, a favorite – Antico Paoli. Waitstaff flirted, lots of delicious food was served and a great time was had by all. Walking back to the hotel, talk turned once again to the handsome and seemingly randy Italian men and the ladies (even after a day of visiting multiple churches) were all giggly in anticipation of the possibility of having a good time on their last night in town.
I just don't care.
They went to the bar and I went to my room. Called and talked to Mamma for a little while, then I watched some teevee via computer before hitting the sack.
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