Michelangelo's DavidThe Accademia

Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia has long lines for one reason Michelangelo's Davidbut is packed with other artistic delights, from Michelangelo's amazing unfinished Slaves to works by Giambologna, Andrea del Sarto, and Botticelli
Many visitors come to Florence and don't care about the Uffizi or the Duomo. They just have one question on their lips "Which way to the David?" The Accademia Galleries contain many paintings (by Perugino, Botticelli, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, etc.), and Giambologna's plaster study for the Rape of the Sabines, but most people come here for one thing only. In 1501 Michelangelo took an enormous piece of marble that a previous sculptor had chipped at before declaring it unworkable, and by 1504 turned it into a Goliath-sized David, a masterpiece of the male nude. The sculpture is so realistic, so classically lifelike shifting its weight onto one leg and holding its sling nonchalantly on its shoulderthat it completely changed the way in which people thought about sculpting the human body. David was for a long time in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (a replica stands there now), and stuck inside like this room it looks a little over-large, giving it an oafish air. The hall leading to the David is lined with Michelangelo's nonfiniti (unfinished) Slaves, or Prisonersto many people more interesting than the David itself. These Slaves are in varying degrees of being worked on, and give a critical insight into how Michelangelo approached his craft chipping away first at the abdomen and fully realizing that part before moving on to rough out limbs and faces. Their title, Slaves, is rather appropriate as these muscular, primordial figures seem to be struggling to emerge from their stony prisons. The Palestrina Piet here was long attributed to Michelangelo but most scholars now believe it is the work of his students. The statue of St. Matthew (begun in 1504) is, however, by the master. A number of 15th- and 16th-century Florentine artists are here; search out the Madonna del Mare (Madonna of the Sea) attributed to Botticelli or his student Filippino Lippi.

The Uffizi Galleries

Visiting the Uffizi is like taking Renaissance 101: a smorgasbord of paintings by Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Fra' Angelico, and Botticelliincluding his iconic Birth of Venus
The Uffizi Galleries serve as a kind of real-life textbook on the development of the Renaissance from the 13th to the 18th centuries. That's a fancy way of saying that this (relatively) tiny museum has some of the greatest paintings by some of the greatest artists of the early and High Renaissance, from Giotto to Botticelli to Michelangelo and beyond. It can be downright exhausting.

Although only a fraction of the size of galleries like the Louvre or Vatican, the Uffizi ranks in the world's top echelon of museums. What it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for in quality, with room after room of unequivocal masterpieces. These rooms open off corridors lined by ancient sculptures and elaborately painted to celebrate the history of Florence and the ruling Medici clan, whose private offices ("uffizi" in old Florentine dialect) these were and whose final heir, Maria Luisa de' Medici, in her will stipulated that this, the family's private art collection, be opened to the public. Thank you, Maria Luisa.

The first corridor

Giotto's Ognissanti Maest (c.1310). You get off to a roaring start with the trio of giant Maest paintings in the first room. Together, these "Madonna in Majesty" the Virgin Mary seated on a throne as the Queen of Heaven, often bobbling a baby Jesus on her lapshow visually how the Renaissance began, what made it different from everything that came before. Painting quickly moved from the rigid, Byzantine style of Cimabue's versionthe so-called Santa Trinita Maestthrough some more earthy (and decorative) Gothic elements courtesy of the Sienese great Duccio, to the point where painting is completely transformed by the artist who broke all the rules and in the process catalyzed Renaissance painting, Giotto. Giotto's Mary (right, bottom)the Ognissanti Maesthas actual and weight bearing down and bulk under her robes, the fabric of her silken blouse pulling against her breasts in a realistic waycompared with Cimabue's Madonna (right, top), who is free-floating above her throne in a typically Byzantine drapery of blue and red robes finely incised with a hatchwork of gold leaf. Giotto's Mary face is a naturalistic study of a sturdy peasant woman, not the almond-eyed, arrow-nosed Byzantine ideal of unearthly beauty in Cimabue. The attendant angels in the Giotto are all individuals (their faces unique) and are milling about, halos bumping into one another, while standing firmly on the ground, not identikit angelic clones floating around merely to decorate the margins. (Also, Giottothough still a generation from the development of true perspectiveuses ingenious little tricks to show depth, like having two of the deep background angels peer at the scene through the windows in the side of the throne.) The differences between these two works is staggeringnot because one is "better" than the other (it isn't), but because of what each has to say about how a painting should be done. Both artists were great masters. It's just that Giotto was the master who was pointing to the future, while Cimabue had only mastered what had come before. That this quantum leap in art happened within a single generation makes it all the more remarkable. The works were painted a mere 25 years apart. The icing on the cake? Cimabue had actually been Giotto's teacher. Cimabue discovered the former shepherd as a lad, using a sharp rock to idly scratch sketches of his sheep into a boulder and took him under his wing. Simone Martini's Annunciation (1333) And all that's just in the first roomand I didn't even get to the Duccio, or any of the other works in this room.

Like I said: small museum; major collection. (OK, I promise: no more lengthy art history lessons.) Move on through rooms featuring the work of early Sienese greats like Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini (love his 1333 Annunciation, in which the Virgin Mary draws back violently, looking distinctly disbelieving at the Archangel Gabriel's news of her impending motherhood), then on to Florentine and other Tuscan masters like Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Filippo Lippi (debauched monk, bon vivant, and teacher of a young Botticelli), and Paolo Uccello (a painter obsessed with the newly discovered technique of perspective; in one corner of his large, ingenious and patently uglyBattle of San Romano, one soldier has even, in the words of one great art historian, "managed to die in perspective").

Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation (1472-75).Now you come to a vast room dedicated to Botticelli, focused on his two most famous works, The Birth of Venus (that blonde-on-a-half-shell rising from the sea foam) and The Allegory of Spring. The tour-bus crowds tend to plant themselves in front of these for 20 minutes at a time, so you may have to wait for a good look, but meanwhile you can entertain yourself with the rooms' lesser-known works by Botticelli and his contemporary Ghirlandaio (who first taught a young Michelangelo how to fresco). Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation (1475-80).Beyond this room, you've got paintings by Luca Signorelli, Perugino (Raphael's first teacher), and another Annunciation, this one painted around 147580 by a young Leonardo da Vinci in his mid-20s. In the same room you can see a bit more of Leonardo's early work in the form of Andrea del Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (147578), in which Verrocchio's young apprentice Leonardo da VInci likely painted the curly-haired angel in the lower left (another, older apprentice Botticellimay have painted the angel next to Da Vinci's). According to Vasari, when Verrocchio saw Da Vinci's angel, he was so humbled by his student's mastery that he put down his brushes and vowed never to paint again. (Good thing he had a successful career as a sculptor to fall back on.) Normally, you can also admire Da Vinci's russet-tinged Adoration of the Magi nearby, started around 1481 but left thoroughly unfinished when Leonardo decamped for Milanevidence that Leonardo was already well into his habit of rarely finishing what he started. [Note: This painting was taken to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure Florence's main restoration studioin late 2012 for study and a subsequent restoration that is estimated to last one to two years.]

The Tribune (and rest of the first corridor)

Take the time to cycle through the small octagonal room called the Tribuna, designed by Buontalenti in 1584 with a pietra dura (stone inlay) floor, mother-of-pearl ceiling dome, and bloodred walls covered with High Renaissance and Mannerist paintings. You shuffle around the perimeter of the room, admiring the saints and Medici portraits by the likes of Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, and especially Bronzino (the best: a portrait of Eleonora da Toledo, wife of

Cosimo I, with her son Giovanni de' Medici, arrayed fabulously in the same velvet and pearl-laced dress in which, it turns out, she was eventually buried). In the center of the Tribuna is ranged a handful of choice ancient statues, including a pair of wrestlers displaying a rather, er, interesting hold that is extremely illegal today (let us just say this hold is only practicable if you happen to be male and wrestle nude, as the ancient Greeks did), and the famous Medici Venus, a 1st century BC copy of Praxiteles' original Aphrodite of Cnidos (Praxiteles was the Michelangelo of Ancient Greece, though most of what we know of his work is through copies like this one). Following the Tribuna is a series of rooms filled with northern European art from the pre- and earlyRenaissance eras (Drer, Cranach, Hans Holbein the Younger) as well as paintings from Venetian masters like Correggio, Bellini, and Giorgione. All of these are fine works, and many would likely be among the centerpieces of other collections. However, this is not other collections, This is the Uffizi, the most embarassingly masterpiece-laden museum of its size in the world. Most peopleespecially on a first visit tend to blow through these northern Reniassance rooms pretty quickly.

The connecting hall

Zipping through the Flemish and Venetian stuff is all fine and well, because as soon as you move on around to the second corridor you're going to be right back into the biggest heavy hitters of Old Masters. First, however, most visitors pause to take a breather in the connecting hall between the two main corridors. The Uffizi, built in 1560 by Giorgio Vasari for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, were built as a long, U-shaped buildingtwo long corridors connected by a shorter hall at the Arno River end. The painting galleries are up on the top floor, and the connecting hall (at the base of the "U") offers some fine intimate views of downtown Florence. Pause to look out the tall windows in one direction down the Uffizi's elongated courtyard that opens into Piazza della Signoria at the far end, and then out the opposite windows for a panorama over the Arno River, Ponte Vecchio, and the Corridorio Vasariano (below).

The second corridor

Michelangelo's Holy Family or Doni Tondo (150405).Michelangelo's bright and colorful Holy Family (a.k.a. the Doni Tondo, after the family that commissioned it for a wedding) signals our dive into the High Renaissance. The startling colors and attention to the musculature of twisting bodies that Michelangelo used in groundbreaking works like this one influenced a whole generation of artists called "Mannerists"Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, and Parmigianinowhose works fill next few rooms. (Proof that all art is 'modern art'...at least in its own time. The High Renaissance offshoot movement we now call "Mannerism" is an abbreviation of how the works by these artists were referred to at the time: as painting done "nella maniera moderna," which means "in the modern manner." Hence, "Mannerism." It could have just as easily been called "modernism," but then what would we have called the new styles of art birthed in the late 19th/early 20th century? Actually, the irony of terming everything from the Impressionists to Abstract Expressionism "modernism" has led us to use the ridiculous and meaningless phrase "post-modern" to describe

art from about 1960 on. Does that mean art now lives in an eternal future state, beyond the modern present? But I digress. Also, I broke my promise about no more art history. Sorry.) They are continually rearranging the rooms in the latter half of the second corridor. Ever since a bomb damaged part of the Uffizi in 1993 (it was a political hit by a home-grown terrorist, nothing for you to worry about) they've been expanding and reinventing the museum to fulfill a new vision of the "Grande Uffizi," the project moving along with typical Italian speed and vigor, which is best described as "glacial, only without so much actual movement forward." All this means is that you never quite know where the balance of the works will pop up, but you will be treated somewhere to paintings by other big guns of the High Renaissance and early baroque, like Raphael, Titian, and Caravaggio.

The Ponte Vecchio

Florence's "Old Bridge" is a medieval span lined by tiny goldsmith shops
The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) links the north and south banks of the Arno River at its narrowest point. The bridge has long been a landmark symbol of the city, overhanging with little shops the way most European bridges were in the Middle Ages (though precious few have survived). The Ponte Vecchio was destroyed and rebuilt many times before the construction of the 1345 bridge you see today, designed by Taddeo Gaddi, and has been lined with these same goldsmith's shops for centuries. Many of the exclusive gold and jewelry stores are owned by descendents of the 41 artisans set up on the bridge in the 16th century by Cosimo I de' Medici. Cosimo had Giorgio Vasari build him an elevated corridor so he could hurry between his downtown offices ("uffizi" in local dialect; now a world-class museum) and the new Medici residence in the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river without mixing with the crowds. This corridor still crosses the Ponte Vecchio atop the shop roofs on the eastern side (part of the Uffizi, it is still occasionally opened the public more). Not long after his corridor was complete, however, Cosimo found something else to complain about: the stench rising to his private skywalk from the butchers and skin tanners beneath, whose workshops had traditionally lined the bridge. Cosimo summarily booted out the butchers, moved in the classier goldsmithsand, naturally, raised the rent. Many people don't even realize they're actually on a bridge until they get to the center, where suddenly the phalanx of shops on either side is interrupted by two small terraces, one on each side, for gazing up or down the river. One has a bust of famed Renaissance silversmith and autobiographer Andrea del Verrocchio. Both are often festooned with padlocks (see the box on the right).

How the Ponte Vecchio survived the Nazis

Florentines tirelessly recount the story of how in 1944 Hitler's retreating troops destroyed all the bridges crossing the Arnoall since reconstructed, often with the original material fished out of the river, or at least according to the archival designs and with stone extracted from the same ancient quarrieswith the exception of the Ponte Vecchio.

Supposedly, the Nazi in charge of the retreat was overtaken by a momentary fit of whimsy, felt that the Ponte Vecchio was simply too beautiful to blow up, and countermanded his orders. (Disobeying orders is not something any officer does lightly, especially not a Nazi.) Instead, the fleeing German troops bombed both bridgeheadsand the surrounding buildingsto block the way across and slow the Allied advance. This is why most of the buildings on either end of the bridge in the otherwise thoroughly medieval areas of Via Por Santa Maria and Via Guicciardini have a distinct, 1950s look.

The Duomo group

Florence's Duomo (Cathedral), Baptistery with its Gates of Paradise, Bell Tower designed by Giotto, and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo museum
The Duomo (cathedral) of Florenceofficial name: Santa Maria del FIoreis clad in festive white, green, and pink marbles, with a flamboyant neo-Gothic facade from the 18th century, all capped by Brunelleschi's massive brick-red dome that rears nobly above the city skyline. The cathedral is joined on its lively square by the baptistery, Giotto's bell tower, and a museum, a group of buildings that together will gobble up about one to three hours of your time.

The Duomo
Florence's Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's dome
lorence's cathedral is sort of inside out, prettily decorated on the outside but rather barren within. That's not to say it isn't worth visiting. Just that its interior is not as spectacular as you might expect from so famous a church. What really makes the Duomo so famous are everything but the church itself: the famous dome by Brunelleschi, the adjacent bell tower and baptistery, the sculptures in the Duomo museum around back. In all, the Duomo is probably best to enjoy from the little piazza out in front, where tourists flock, street musicians and artists ply their trades, students strum guitars, and Florentines weave their way through the crowds with the evening's shopping in hand. (Though in 2012 local authorities tried to break up the scene by cordoning off the Duomo steps during daylight hours so you cannot sit on them.)

The cathedral facade

The festive facade of the Duomo is a particolored Neo-Gothic take on what the overwrought imaginations of 19th century decorators imagined the cathedral builders would have wanted. Until 1871, the cathedral didn't have a proper facade, though every major architect and artist of the Renaissance submitted plans or models for it (none were ever executed, but some are preserved in the Duomo Museum). Know how you can tell the facade is a 19th century mock-up? The color scheme is a celebration of the then-new Italian flag, done all in red, white, and green to honor the freshly-minted Kingdom of Italy (of which Florence was, briefly, the capital, from 186570).

The cathedral interior

Paolo Uccello's fresco of the "Monument" for Giovanni Acuto in the Florence cathedral.When you do go inside, there are some interesting early Renaissance frescoes. On the left aisle is a greenish fresco of a man on horseback. It's the condottiere (mercenary leader) Giovanni Acuto (born John Hawkwood in England), hired by Florence to help them conquer much of Tuscany. The famed condottiere was promised a bronze equestrian statue as a memorial, but Florentines are a famously frugal lot. After Hawkwood died, the city figured they'd save a buck by hiring that master of perspective Paolo Uccello to paint this trompe-l'oeil "statue" insteada fresco of a memorial that never was. The frescoes inside the dome, on the other hand, are colorfuland packed with agreeably gruesome scenes of the Damned in Hell in the Last Judgment bitbut not terribly good, started by Giorgio Vasari and largely done by his eager student Federico Zuccari. Though these days they like to limit tourists to the nave, roping off the transept for actual worshippers, if it's open do make your way to the back left corner behind the altar to admire the bronze doors (by Luca della Robbia) and wood inlay of the New Sacristy. In the crypt you can see the remains of the earlier church of Santa Reparata on this site.

Brunelleschi's dome
Hands down, my favorite thing to do at the Duomo is to climb the 348-foot-high dome (la cupola del Duomo), both for the great panorama across the city you get from the top and to see, from the inside, Brunelleschi's architectural marvel. You actually clamber up between the dome's two onion-like layersand in the process get some great up-close views of those crazy Zuccari frescoes (skilled though the frescoes may not be, the scene of the Damned being tortured in Hell is certainly imaginative). The dome actually presented something of an engineering conundrum for the cathedral authorities in the early 15th century. A yawning space had been left open for a dome that at 45m (150 feet) widewould be far larger than any attempted since antiquity. Unfortunately, no architect of the time had any idea how to span the space. No architect, that is, save Brunelleschi, who unlocked the secrets of Rome's Pantheon to create the largest freestanding dome since antiquity, a masterpiece of architecture, engineering, and lyrical grace.

The cathedral dome

The ingenious construction of Brunelleschi's dome.By the early 15th century, Florence had nearly finished its ambitious, enormous new cathedral. There was only one problem.

At its center was a yawning space, an architectural conundrum that had been kicked down the line of responsibility, each architect figuring the next one would have to figure it out. See, the dome necessary to cover this space was far larger than any attempted since antiquityand no architect of the time had any idea how to span the space. No architect, that is, save Brunelleschi. All the experts of the day said no one would ever be able to erect a dome that big not without using scaffolding and supports that would be far too costly to build. Among the suggestions to solve this part of the problem was to pile up a mound of dirt inside the cathedral, seeded with small coins. The dirt could be used as a support for building the dome, and then removed at no cost by inviting the poor to come take away pails of dirt in the hopes of finding some cash in it. Scaffolding (or dirt pile) aside, even if it the workers had something to stand on while they labored, and even if the thing could be built, many were afraid a dome that large would simply collapse under its own weight. Brunelleschi proved them all wrong
Eggs again

According to legend, Brunelleschi approached the church works authorities claiming he knew the answer and could build the required dome, but he refused to reveal his solution until granted to commission to do so. The authorities were just as stubborn, and refused to grant such a major commission to a relatively untested architect. Besides, they had a long line of artists eager and willing to take on the task, may of whom had sketched plans or made models. They were at a standstill. Then Brunelleschi issued his challenge. He produced and egg and a slab of marble. He said that if any of the other artists up for the job there could make the egg stand on its end on the smooth marble, he would tell them how he planned to build the dome. If they could not, and Brunelleschi could, he would receive the commission with no questions asked. They passed around the egg, each trying carefully to balance it on its end, each failing. Then it was Brunelleschi turn. He took the egg in hand and brought it down firmly, end-first, onto the the slab. The end cracked and flattened, and the egg stood there, oozing albumin. The gathered artists and dignitaries were indignant, claiming he was a cheat and that any of them could easily have done the same thing. To this, Brunelleschi replied, "And any one of you would have know how to vault the cupola, had you seen my model or plans." Now there's every reason to believe this story is apocryphal (you may have heard the same tale told about Columbus), but it is the one Vasari tells, it fits nicely with Brunelleschi's character, and perhaps most importantly it neatly brings the broken egg theme back into the story.

(For the record: if true, Brunelleschi was playing a pretty big gamble here, because you can, actually, balance an egg on its end; all you need are steady handsand the time of year has nothing to do with it, so forget that old tale about needing to do it on the equinox.) Regardless of whatever theatrics may or may not have gone on, Brunelleschi eventually managed to secure the commission. And he did build the dome: 45m (148 feet) wide and 90m (295 feet) high from drum to the top of the lantern (rising to a total of 114.5m, or 375 feet, feet off the ground), with no pile of dirt or forests of scaffolding to support it, andfar from collapsing under its owen weight the dome stands to this day, rising nobly above the city skyline as the symbol of Florence. Here is how he did it.
The building of the dome

What Brunelleschi had actually done was to unlock the secrets of Rome's Pantheon. He used vertical marble ribs to distribute the weight, wrapping the inner wall with sandstone and chain "barrel hoops" between the ribs to prevent them from spreading. He built the dome not as one piece but of two shells, an inner and an outer one, each thinning as they approached each other and the top). He also had the brilliant idea to use interlocking bricks in a herringbone pattern. Bricks were lighter than stone, and interlocking them enabled the thing actually to support itself against its ribs as it was being built, removing the need for interior scaffolding at allat least to support the structure's weight. The workers still needed something to stand on while they laid all that brick, of course. So Brunelleschi simply incorporated hooks, holes, and rings into his design so that small, movable sections of scaffolding could actually be hung from completed sections of the dome, enabling his crew to work on the next section up (picture a window-washer's hanging platform). Construction progressed from 1420 to 1436, during which time Brunelleschi developed several novel cranes and pulley systems to ferry materials up to the work area (some originals still on display in the Duomo Museum). He even installed a small taverna on site so workers wouldn't have to waste time climbing back down to the ground for lunch. Brunelleschi didn't simply design an impressively large (and quite beautiful) dome. In the process, he also midwifed massive advances in engineering, created dozens of suddenly indispensable tools and machines, and revolutionized the Renaissance construction industry. No bad for someone who had set out to be a sculptor. For his efforts, Filippo Brunelleschi was according a singular honor. He remains the only Florentine ever buried in the cathedral itselfdirectly below his revolutionary dome.

The Baptistery
Florence's Baptistery and its Gates of Paradise by Ghiberti
The Baptistery across from the Cathedral is the oldest building of the whole Duomo ensemble, dating back to somewhere between the 4th and 7th centuries.

It is world famous for its three sets of bronze double doors covered with relief panels. The South Doors were done by Gothic great Andrea Pisano, and the other two represent the life work of Lorenzo Ghiberti. This humble sculptor accidentally kick-started the Renaissance (with the North Doors, which he spent 21 years crafting). He then spent 27 years laboring to create the East Doors, so revolutionary and beautiful that Michelangelo himself later dubbed them "worthy to grace the Gates of Paradise," the name by which they have been known ever since.

The baptistery doors that started the Renaissance

A three sets of bronze doors are famous, but the grandest are the East Doors facing the Duomo, cast by Ghiberti from 142552. Replaced now by gleaming replicas (the originals are in the Duomo Museum), these large panels display a remarkable skill in using perspective and composition to tell complicated stories. Michelangelo once called them "The Gates of Paradise," and the name stuck. Ghiberti was allowed free artistic reign in creating these groundbreaking Gates of Paradise because Florence was so happy with how his first commission had turned out. Way back in 1401, Ghiberti had won a competition to cast the baptistery's North Doors, beating out the likes of Donatello and Brunelleschi (who, in a huff, decided to turn his focus to architecture instead; wise move, since he later returned to build the famous dome over the cathedral, revolutionizing Renaissance architecture). Since the reasons the judges chose Ghiberti's contest submission were based on the aspects of art (realism, dynamic composition, perspective techniques) that would become the keystones of the Renaissance, many scholars chose this date, 1401, to mark the beginning of the Renaissance. (Why few guidebooks mention this is beyond me, but: two of the submitted bronze panels from that 1401 competitionGhiberti's and Brunelleschi'sare preserved in the Bargello sculpture museum.)

The baptistery's interior and the story of an antipope

The Baptistery's interior, open the afternoon, is swathed in glittering 13th-century mosaics. The cone-shaped ceiling is covered an incredibly detailed Last Judgment scene presided over by an enormous, ape-toed Christ some eight meters (26.4 feet) tall. Against one wall rises the Tomb of Antipope John XXIII, designed by Renaissance architectural giant Michelozzo and decorated by none other than Donatello. This begs two questions: (1) What is an antipope? and (2) What is one doing with a tomb decorated by such important artists in such a sacred spot? So, what is an antipope? Starting in the third century, the complicated politics of the church often created two or three "antipopes" each century, usually rival claimants to the bishopric of Rome (remember, that's the pope's only real office: he's the Bishop of Rome), or two top cardinals backed by competing emperors, kings, or other powers. Things came to a head in the late 14th century when, to break the string of fairly corrupt French popes out of Avignon, the conclave of cardinals elected a Pugliese man to become Pope Urban VI. Several of them soon had

second thoughts, convened again in 1378, declared Urban VI's election to be invalid, and set up Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, based in Avignon. This began the Great Western Schism, and I'm just glossing over it here, but things were a mess. There was a succession of rival popes, one based in Rome and one in Avignon, who spent much of their time excommunicating one other and trying to win a critical mass of support from other European powers. In 1409, a group of cardinals got disgusted enough with both campsafter both popes promised to attend at meeting to resolve the issue then balked and never showedthat a church council convened in Pisa. It voted to depose both Rome and Avignon's popes andyepelect a third man to become Pope Alexander V. So now the church had three popes, each claiming to be the only legitimate one. Alexander V died less than a year into his pseudo-papacy, and he was succeeded by John XXIII. John XXIII's real name was Baldassare Cossa, and he was a decent enough bloke, the head of the Council of Pisa that had elected Alexander V. (Though, if you believe famed historian Edward Gibbon, John XXIII was guilty of incest, rape, sodomy, murder, and, my favorite, piracy. There is strong evidence this was all just slander, part the cross-continental mudslinging that came with the Great Schism.) Whatever else he may have done, John XXIII was instrumental in ending the Great Western Schism. At the behest of Emperor Sigismund, he convened the Council of Constance in 1412. Eventuallyafter a rousing couple of years that included flights, imprisonment, escape, reconciliation, and more both John XXIII and the Roman Pope Gregory XII agreed to authorize the council to elect a single new pope. Then, incredibly, both men abdicated their papacies (though how willingly is the subject of much discussion). The council quickly excommunicated the holdout pope in Avignon, Benedict XIII, and in 1417 elected a Roman cardinal named Odo Colonna to become Pope Martin V. The Great Western Schism was over. Baldassare Cossa, the man who gave up the papacy (or at least a papacy) and helped restore the church, died in Florence on December 22, 1419, just six months after Martin V made him a cardinal again in the restored church. So, why the grand tomb? Cossa had made a key ally of Florence in 1504, when he helped the city conquer Pisa. He also made a key alley of Florence's Medici clan when, as pope, he designated that the family become the official bankers for the papacya legacy upon which the Medici would found centuries of fame, fortune, and power. The Medici were too shrewd as politicians to forget their friends. This is why Cossa's executorsmost prominently Medici dynasty founder Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici and his son Cosimochose to honor the pope they had backed with a magnificent tomb, one that reportedly cost more than 1,000 florins, was crafted by the city's foremost artists, and was installed in the very ecclesiastical heart of the city: inside the ancient baptistery. It was the last time any pope was buried outside of Rome.

Giotto's bell tower

Giotto's Florence campanile is one of Italy's loveliest bell towers
To the right of the cathedral facade is what's known as Giotto's Bell Tower, even though that early Renaissance painter only designed and built the first two levels of it. Several architects and styles later, it emerged as "The Lily of Florence," a 277-foot-high pillar of marble pierced with slender windows and ringed by marble reliefs. (Most of the sculptures have been rescued from the elements and replaced by replicas. Want to see the originals up close? They're housed in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo behind the cathedral.) If climbing the Duomo's dome wasn't enough for you, you can scale this baby, too, in 414 steps and without the crowds the Dome's ascent draws. The view's not quite so high, but you get a great close-up shot of Brunelleschi's dome.

The Duomo Museum

Florence's Museo dell'Opera dell Duomo is filled with works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and other Titans of the early Renaissance
The Museo dell'Opera Del Duomo (Museum of Cathedral Works) is directly behind the cathedral at Piazza del Duomo 9perhaps hiding back here is how this rich and informative museum remains largely undiscovered and devoid of crowdsthough the expanded and more obvious entrance helps.

All the statues removed from the cathedral facade (including the original, 15th century one), from Giotto's bell tower, and from the baptistery in order to preserve them out of the elements are kept here including the original panels from Ghiberti's famous Gates of Paradise.

The best of the statues

What all that means in practical terms is that the rooms are filled with early works by Andrea Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Luca della Robbia, and especially the expressive and emotional statues of Donatello, including a weeping wooden Mary Magdalene, looking creepily haggard, and the leering bald prophet Habakuk that locals call "Pumpkinhead." Look up high on the walls in the first room up on the first floor (second story to Americans) and you'll see two cantorie (choir lofts, though they might have actually been organ lofts) made in 1430 and filled with dancing, singing, and running children. The one of the left was done by Luca della Robbia, each panel crowded with a little Renaissance boy band or girl group strumming lutes, banging drums, and belting out the hits (the actual panels are collected down at eye level, with replicas taking their place in the choir loft above). The cantoria on the right was done by Donatello, who carved the little cherubs as racing across the surface behind the columns, one panel spilling into the next to create a single long scene, the kiddies flitting in and around the columns and peeking out from behind them, pushing and shoving and laughing away.

Two very different styles, both delightful.

Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise

The star exhibit is the collection of original gilded bronze relief panels from Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise from the baptistery. They removed to save them from the wear and tear of the weather; those now on its doors are replicas), which are slowly being put on display here under glass as they are cleaned and restored. (I remember them still back on the actual baptistery gates themselves in the mid 1980s, when the piazza surrounding them was, believe it or not, a parking lot. Each panel was caked in so much sooty black dirt the legacy of car exhaust from before Italy had catalytic convertersyou could barely tell what was on them. Just a few shiny parts poked out here and there, marking the bits where decades of tourists' curious fingers had rubbed away the grime.)

Michelangelo's (?) Piet

On the landing between the first and second floors sits Michelangelo's Piet groupthe figure of Nicodemus at the back is said to be a self-portrait. Then again, it is also said of this work that either:

(a) Michelangelo took a hammer to it in a fury because it wasn't turning out right and was only stopped from destroying it when his assistants physically restrained him (and then later finished off the grouping of figures their master had abandoned), or (b) Michelangelo didn't touch his chisel to any part of the sculpture and that it was entirely the product of his workshop.

Who knows? What is pretty certainbased on obvious stylistic differencesis that his followers probably did carve at least some of the figures.

Brunelleschi's dome
There are also a series of intriguing exhibits related to the building of the cathedral, including some of the actual gear and block and tackle invented by Brunelleschi to engineer his revolutionary Cathedral dome in 142036 (along with a plaster cast of his death mask). The full story is told on the page about Brunelleschi, but in brief, there were two problems to solve. 1) Architectural: Everyone said the empty space to be capped by a dome was too big and any dome would collapse under its own weight. Based on the best architectural practices and theories of the time, they were right. Brunelleschi, however, had studied the Pantheon in Rome and came up with an elegant architectural solution. He built the dome in two shells of bricksinterlocked in a herringbone pattern and supported by vertical ribs and had the shells thin and become lighter as they approach the top (and each other). 2) Engineering: Everyone said, fine, even if you could build a dome, it would still be prohibitively expensive and cumbersome to fill the entire church with enough scaffolding atop which to build the dome. Again, this was

the best engineering solution available to them at the time, and they were right. Brunelleschi's outside-the-box solution was to do away with the traditional forest of scaffolding entirely. Remember those interlocking bricks (molds for which are on display here)? They also made each level of the dome self-supporting, allowing Brunelleschi's team to work on just one level, or layer at a timewhich they did from small scaffolds hung from the inside of the partially completed dome itself. In effect, they used each recently-completed layer to support the workers while they built the next one. Ingenious. (Fun aside: Brunelleschi also installed a tavern up in the job site itself so his workers wouldn't waste time lowering themselves back down to the ground and then up again for lunch.) To ferry workers, equipment, and supplies up to his novel working environment, Brunelleschi also adapted and invented new pulley systems, cranes, and those hanging scaffolds, some of which are the items on display here. Yes, these are the actual, 590-year-old wooden devices that revolutionized the world of architectural engineering in the early 15th century.

The facades that never were

There are also several 16th century wooden models of potential cathedral facades offered by the architectural greats of the day, including Giambologna and Buontalenti. These were part of a 1588 competition finally to give the Duomo a proper facade, and as part of the buildup in 1587, church authorities merrily scraped away the original, partial facade by Arnolfo di Cambio that had graced the bottom third of the cathedral front since 1420. (Luckily, they saved di Cambio's original statues, now on display in the first room as pictured in the photograph up at the start of this page.) Unfortunately, they jumped the gun with the whole 'destroying the existing facade' move. For various reasons, none of the new plans were selected or built. Subsequent attempts to get a facade program off the ground failed as well, and the Duomo remained largely faceless for more than 300 years. Emilio De Fabris designed the cathedral's current, Neo-Gothic facade in 1871 in the wake of nationalist euphoria when Florence was (briefly) capital of the newly created Kingdom of Italy.

Santa Croce
Santa Croce church is the Westminster Abbey of Florence: The tombs of Renaissance giants Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Rossini (plus some great Giotto frescoesand a renowned leather school)

This big ol' barn of a Franciscan church on Florence's western edge has some great Giotto frescoes (below), but is also the Westminster Abbey of the Renaissance. Also like Westminster, Santa Croce now (scandalously) charges an admission fee.

The tombs
Santa Croce sports the tombs of Michelangelo, composer Rossini (Barber of Seville and the William Tell Overture, a.k.a. the Lone Ranger Theme), political thinker and writer Machiavelli (who's gotten a bad rap for coming right out and saying a good ruler sometimes has to be sneaky), and Pisan scientist Galileo (the guy who dropped balls of differing weights off the Leaning Tower and went on to get excommunicated for claiming the Earth orbited the suns'okay; the pope later forgave him... in 1992; note, however, the Earth properly orbiting the sun on this funerary monument).

The Giotto frescoes

.Head to the right transept to see two chapels covered by the frescoes of Giotto, a former shepherd who became the forefather of the Renaissance in the early 14th century when he broke painting out of its static Byzantine mold and infused it with life, movement, depth, and emotion. Never before had monks cried so piteously at their leader's death, holding his hand tenderly and gazing despondently at his dead face. The frescoes were damaged in the baroque era when the frescoes were whitewashed away and wall tombs were rudely attached atop them. To modern eyes, which view Giotto as one of the most important painters in the history of art, this borders on sacrilegeand much time and painstaking effort was spent in the 1840s to uncover the Giotto frescoesbut the baroque thought little of covering up what were, to them, crude medieval decorations. (Taste is, of course, subjective, and I just hope our descendents don't develop a deep passion for the overwrought baroque era and become incensed that we destroyed the later decorations just to uncover a few Giottos.)

The leather school

Off the right transept (or enter at Via San Giuseppe 5r around the left/north side of the church), a corridor leads through the gift shop to the monastery's famed leather schoola bit pricey, but of very high quality. You can also ask the workers to emboss your purchasesay, a walletwith initials or a name in gold leaf. (Somewhere around here, I still have a small leather change purse with my initials and the Lily of Florence in gold that I bought when I was 11.)

The Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce

After you finish with the church itself, you wend your way through a series of pretty cloisters on the south flank containing modern sculptures and the Pazzi Chapel, one of Brunelleschi's architectural masterpieces. The ancient refectory was frescoed by Gothic great Taddeo Gaddi with a de rigueur Last Supper scene (conventual dining halls often had this most famous of biblical meals painted on one wall) just beneath a massive Tree of Life. Also here are fresco fragments by Andrea Orcagna, which used to be on the right wall of the church itself; Donatello's bronze St. Louis of Toulouse (in a plaster niche recreating its original housing on the exterior of the

Orsanmichele; and a gallery filled with some of the art salvaged from the 1966 Arno flood (which inundated the city with 20 feet of water and mud), including a badly damaged Crucifix by Cimabue, Giotto's teacher.

The Orsanmichele
A Gothic granary-turned-church decorated by early Renaissance sculptures
Given this odd church's location halfway down the historic center's major street, you'll keep passing as you criss-cross Florence. Might as well pop in for a look. Save for the statues in elaborate marble niches and the oversized, filigreed window frames, from the outside this blocky building doesn't look like most churches, because it wasn't always one. It was a medieval city granary, built in 1337, and became a church only after a miraculous vision appeared on one of its interior columns in 1380. The statues of saints in frilly stone Gothic niches are by such Renaissance greats as Donatello, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and Giambologna. What's in a name? This was once the site of a garden (orto) for the now-vanished monastery of St. Michael. In other words, it was the "Orto San Michele," which, over the centuries, elided to "Orsanmichele."Actually, the statues outside are replicas; most of the the time-bitten originals are kept safe from further deterioration in a museum upstairs which is, oddly, open only on Mondays (which gets confusing in August, when the church itself is closed Mondays). At least it's free. The two statues that are not in that museum upstairs are Donatello's St. George (in the Bargello, complete with his original niche) and his St. Louis of Toulouse (in the museum at Santa Croce). Inside the church itself (for which entry is free) is a massive and gorgeous carved Gothic altar (technically a tabernacle) inside by Andrea Orcagna containing an exquisite 1347 Madonna and Child by Giotto follower Bernardo Daddi.

The Bargello
A flock of Donatellos and other great works in this sculpture gallery annex of the Uffizi
What the Uffizi is to painting, the Bargello is to Renaissance sculpturelargely because this actually was the Uffizi's sculpture and applied arts collection, moved here in 1859 after it outgrew the Uffizi space. This imposing, castle-like palazzo was built in 12551350 as the original "Palazzo del Popolo" seat of government. It remained the mayor's office until 1502, when it became a police headquarters and prison until 1859 (see the box below to the right).

It now contains the greatest collection of Renaissance sculpture in Florencein fact, one of the best in all of Italy. You could spend 45 minutes or two hours here, depending how much you're into the early works of Michelangelo (a wonderfully tipsy Bacchus, the Madonna of the Stairs, and a Bust of Brutus that may be a semi self-portrait), or of mannerist Giambologna (his Flying Mercury and many whimsical animal bronzes intended to decorate Medici gardens). There are also collections of fine porcelain, objets d'art, silverwork, and other decorative arts, but it is the sculpture that reign supremeespecially the works by Donatello, the first truly great sculptor of the Renaissance.
The baddest prison in town After a confession had been rung out of them by the authorities inside, the bodies of particularly reviled criminals were hung from the Bargello's windows. The great artists of the day would be commissioned to come paint the portraits of the malefactors on the lower external walls as a warning to others. When Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo abolished the death penalty in 1786, the Bargello's torture instruments were ceremoniously burned in the Bargello's surviving bermedieval courtyard.

A room full of Donatellos

A huge room on the second floor is filled with some of Donatello's masterpieces, including a mischievous bronze Atys-Amorino cupid; the most oft-copied version of the Marzocco, the city's heraldic lion; and a terracotta bust of Niccol da Uzzano. There also a noble marble St. George carved in 1416 and long ago removed from its niche at the Orsanmichele. Look at the masterful panel beneath showing the saint slaying his dragon done in schiacciato, a technique of working in extreme low relief, lines often barely scratched into the marble like a sketch, that presaged by a decade the use of linear perspective in painting. The most famous Donatellos here, though, are two versions of David. The first a lovely early work in marble. The second David is a remarkable bronze that depicts the Biblical hero as a prepubescent young boy, naked save for his helmet and massive sword, foot resting casually atop the head of the slain Goliath. It was considered even at the time to be one of the greatest masterpieces of early Renaissance sculptureand was the first free-standing bronze nude cast since antiquity. The room has more than just the Donatellos. There are stellar sculptures by Desiderio da Settignano, Agostino di Duccio, Vecchietta, and Michelozzo, as well as some of the the patented glazed terracottas of Luca della Robbia and Andrea della Robbia. I also like to point out a small work on the wall, a tumultuous Battle Scene by one of Donatello's star students, Giovanni di Bertoldo. Bertoldo would later go on to teach a talented teenager named Michelangelo how to sculpt. (Look at the similar work by a young Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarotti and you'll see Bertoldo's influence.)

The very first work of Renaissance art

Two takes on the Sacrifice of Isaac for the 1401

Baptistery doors competition. Above, Brunelleschi's runner-up entry; below, Ghiberti's winning entry. Also in this cavernous space, along the wall, are the two finalist bronze panels of Abraham Sacrificing Isaac that, in many scholars' estimations, marked the beginning of the Renaissance. Why more guidebooks don't make a big deal out of this is beyond me. These panels were submissions to a 1401 contest held by the powerful Arte di Calimala (Wool Guild) to pick an artist to cast images for the new North Doors of the baptistery. All the great Gothic sculptors of the day entered the contest, including Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Jacopo della Quercia. The judges surprised everyone by picking a relatively obscure 23-year-old sculptor named Lorenzo Ghiberti. At first glance, these panels from both finalistsGhiberti and Brunelleschiare very similar in composition. Look more closely, though, and you'll see why Ghiberti's won. Brunelleschi's figures look posed and still. Ghiberti's look as if we're seeing a snapshot of action, frozen in the moment. Brunelleschi's figures are stylized. Ghiberti's are naturalistic. Brunelleschi's figures are simply laid out in a tableau, with the main action dead center. Ghiberti's are composed to tell a story and, along with the shape and flow of the background rock, move the action dramatically around the scene, drawing your attention to the sacrifice happening on extreme stage right (offsetting it like this adds to the tension of the moment). Brunelleschi's posed figures are seen mostly from straight on (a bent-over shepherd notwithstanding). Ghiberti uses perspective to make his angel leap toward the audience from the clouds, and stacks the shepherds on either side of the donkey both to look more natural and to help sell the illusion of depth. In short, Brunelleschi submitted a gorgeous and masterful work of Gothic art. Ghiberti, however, submitted something new, something that made use of the most current advances and cutting-edge thinking in art. Something worthy of being called "Renaissance."

Piazza della Signoria

Florence's main square is a public living room filled with ancient and Renaissance statues and fountains
In Italy, all roads lead to Rome, but in Florence all roads lead to the elegant Piazza della Signoriathe cultural, political, and social heart of the city since the 14th century. It's a lively, statue-studded square lined with cafs and home to the fortress-like Palazzo Vecchio, off which stretches the "U" of the Uffizi Galleries, Florence's great art museum.

The Loggia de' Lanzi

On the south side of Piazza della Signoriajust to the right of the long U of the Uffiziis the 14th-century Loggia dei Lanzi (also called Loggia della Signoria or sometimes, after its architect, Loggia di Orcagna), Florence's most captivating outdoor sculpture gallery. You might recognize it as the site where Lucy swooned after witnessing a murder in A Room with a View. The loggia has finally been freed of its scaffolding, and is open to visitors for the first time in decades. Benvenuto Cellini's rare 1545 work Perseus was returned here in 2000 after a four-year (and sorely needed) restoration. Giambologna's important Rape of the Sabine is a three-dimensional study in Mannerism (also check out his full-scale plaster study for it in the Accademia), and stands alongside his Hercules Slaying the Centaur and Duke Cosimo de' Medici. The wallflower statues standing against the back are ancient Roman originals.

This Old PalaceThe Palazzo Vecchio

The square is dominated by an imposing rough-hewn fortress, the late 13th-century Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), still Florence's city hall. Its severe Gothic style, replete with crenellations and battlements, is highlighted by a 308-foot campanile that was a supreme feat of engineering in its day. more The raised platform-like porch before the Palazzo Vecchiothe platform, from which orators once addressed the crowds in piazza, is called the aringaria, which is where we got our word "harangue"is lined with statues. Flanking the life-size copy of Michelangelo's David (the original is in the Accademia) are copies of Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (original in the museum inside) and the Marzocco (original in the Bargello), the heraldic lion of Florence. Unfortunately placed next to David's anatomical perfection, on the other side of the stone steps, is Baccio Bandinelli's Heracles (1534), which comes across looking like the "sack of melons" Cellini described it to be.

The Neptune Fountain & the Bonfire of the Vanities

Off the north corner of the Palazzo Vecchio is the piazza's enormous (and controversially awful) Neptune Fountain, carved by Ammanati in 1576 and ringed by (far more interesting) spritely bronze figures cast by Giambologna.

In front of this fountains, a small disk in the ground marks the spot where religious fundamentalist, the "mad monk" from Ferrara Fra' Savonarola was hanged and then burned at the stake for heresy in 1498. This was just a few short years after Savonarolawhile he held the city under his sway and ruled the city as a theocracy during the Medici's temporary exile from Florence incited the original "bonfires of the vanities."

L'Ercole e Caco una scultura in marmo di Baccio Bandinelli

Materiale Marmo bianco

Fontana del Nettuno La figura di Nettuno, realizzata in candido marmo di Carrara =>

Il Marzocco un'opera di Donatello in pietra serena Anticamente si trovava in piazza della Signoria, dove oggi, per preservarla dagli agenti atmosferici, sostituita da una copia

Perseo con la testa di Medusa, nota anche come Perseo del Cellini, una scultura bronzea di Benvenuto Cellini

Palazzo Vecchio
Florence's Palazzo Vecchio is a Gothic town hall decorated by Renaissance masters

The late 13th-century Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace) is a imposing rough-hewn fortress in severe Gothic style, replete with crenellations and battlements and highlighted by a 308-foot campanile that was a supreme feat of engineering in its day. It served as Florence's city hall for many years (a role it fulfills again today) and then home to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (that's Giambologna's bronze statue of him on horseback anchoring the middle of Piazza della Signoria outside). Cosimo I lived here for 10 years beginning in 1540, when much of the interior was remodeled to the elegant Renaissance style you see today, before moving to new accommodations in the Palazzo Pitti.

The palazzo courtyards

You enter (maybe; see "Tips" below) off Piazza della Signora (past a replica of Michelangelo's The David on the site where the real one once stood) and through the stunning entry courtyard, with intricately carved columns and extraordinarily colorful 16th-century frescos by Vasari. In the center of the courtyard is a fountain of a Putto Holding a Dolphin, a copy of Verrocchio's original (which is displayed upstairs). Beyond this is a more workaday open courtyard crowded with staircases and portcullis doors and, most importantly, the ticket and information office, where you can buy admission to the rooms upstairs (and sign up for the often spectacular tours; see "Tips" below).

The Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the 500)

The highlight of the interior is the massive first-floor Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred), whose rich frescoes by Vasari depict Florence's history, with an emphasis on the greatness of his patron, Cosimo I. Formerly the city's council chambers where the 500-man assembly once gathered, this grand hall is still used for government and civic functions. There are several highlights in the huge room. The statue of The Genius of Victory is by Michelangelo (1533 34). Commissioned for the tomb of Pope Julius II, it was later acquired by the Medici from the artist's nephew and set up here. Its sinuous form (pictured below) inspired many of the Mannerist artists of the next generation. Across the room from it stands Giambologna's plaster model for Virtue Overcoming Vice, commissioned to balance the Michelangelo. Off one corner opens the tiny, barrel-vaulted Studiolo of Francesco I, an elaborately decorated private office and laboratory where Francesco, Cosimo I's eldest son and successor as Grand Duke, could indulge in his scientific and alchemy experiments surrounded by paintings of allegory, myth, the natural elements, and his own family by the likes of Vasari and Il Poppi. (The wall paintings conceal cabinets for the Duke's instruments and experimental materials the panel in the back right conceals a door leading into the secret stairs and hidden halls within the palazzo walls, which you can see on the special tours described under "Tips" below.)
The tragic tale of the frescoes you won't see in the Salone dei 500

One highlight of the room that was never to be was a series of frescoes commissioned from the two greatest artistic Titans of Italian history. Leonardo da Vinci was to fresco one wall, and Michelangelo the other, with battle scenes showing Florence's past military victories. Michelangelo completed the life-sized preparatory sketches called "cartoons" (because they were done on large paper, which in Italian is cartone) before being called to Rome by Pope Julius II (to "decorate" the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel).

His sketches were left in Florence, where they were studied and copied by many aspiring artists, most of whom decided to take home a piece here and there. Soon, nothing was left of these never-realized Michelangelo frescoes. All we know about them comes from a few copies made by artists I shall charitably call "less talented" than Michelangelo. Da Vinci, on the other hand, got a good head start on his side of the room, but his frescoes were done in by the man's own eagerness to experiment. He mixed wax in with his pigments, but the resulting frescoes were not drying fast enough. So, to speed up the drying, he had wood-fired braziers set up all along the base of the wallthen watched, in horror, as the heat melted the wax in the partly-finished frescoes and the images simply slid down off the wall to puddle on the floor. Whether he started over again is unknown, since Leonardo left for Milan in 1506.

The Ducal Apartments on the second floor

Upstairs on the secondo piano (third floor to Americans), the richly decorated and frescoed salons including the private quarters of Cosimo's wife, Eleonora de Toledooffer an intriguing glimpse into how the ruling class of Renaissance Florence once lived. There are loads more works by Vasari, plus works by Ghirlandaio and Donatello and many lovely, intensely colors paintings by Bronzino, especially in the Cappella di Eleonora, a private chapel for the duchess. The Room of the Elements in the Palazzo Vecchio. "Fire" and "Water" pictured ("Air" is on the ceiling). The Quartiere Elementi is an apartment suite envisoned in the mid 1550s by Cosimo I de' Medici and Giorgio Vasari as a Florentine equivalent to the Raphael Rooms of (Medici) Pope Leo X in the Vatican in Rome. It was the start of a long and fruitful relationship between the Grand Duke and the man who would become his chief artist and architect. Each room is devoted to one of a variety of celestial beingsfrom the personified Elements (air, water, earth, fire) to the Titans (Saturno/Saturn, Opi/Opsthe Roman versions of Cronus and Rhea) and gods (Giove/Jupiter, Giunone/Juno) to demigods and muses (Ercole/Hercules, Calliope). Here's the kicker: Directly below each room is a corresponding chamber of the same dimensions dedicated to an illustrious member of the Medici familyCosimo il Vecchio below Ceres, Lorenzo Il Magnifico below Opi, Lorenzo's son Giovanni (Pope Leo X) below the Elements, etc. Also up here are the elegant Sale dei Priori, the suite of public meeting rooms of the Florentine Republic.

Climbing the tower

The 95-meter (312-foot) tall bell tower was most likely designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1299 hence its local nickname, Torre di Arnolfoas part of the expansion of the palazzo. The towerwith its iconic bulging top and two battlemented tiers of swallow-tailed merlons called merletti was finished by 1322 and has been copied by buildings all around the world ever since. The clock at the base of the tower is the 1667 handiwork of Bavarian clockmaker Georg Ledelthough the current clockface dates from a 19th century restoration.

The tower is topped by a weathervane featuring a rampant Marzocco lion and a lily, the twin symbols of Florence (replaced by a modern copy, the original is now in a courtyard of the palazzo). Long closed to the public, the Torre di Arnolfo re-opened in June, 2012 to anyone over the age of 6 who is willing to climb 223 steps to a magnificent (if vertiginous) panorama over the heart of Florence. On the way up, you pass the Alberghetto ("little hotel"), a small chamber occasionally to house partciularly troublesome prisonersfrom Cosimo Il Vecchio de' Medici (just before his brief exile) to Girolamo Savonarola (just before his being burned at the stake). At the top are two bell chambers that house, among other bells, the famous Martinella, which once acompanied Florentine troops in battle on a cart to ring out military signals. For centuries, after it was installed in the Palazzo Vecchio tower, it was used to call the people of Florence to assemble on Piazza della Signoria. Silent throughout World War II, the bell was finally rung again on 11 August, 1944, as a signal to the partisans in town to rise up and help liberate Florence from the Nazis.

- Loggia del Mercato Nuovo (Porcellino) In the heart of the historic center, just a few steps away from Ponte Vecchio and Piazza della Signoria, you'll find one of the most characteristic points in all of Florence, the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo, or New Market. This arcade with its wide Renaissance-style arches, was built halfway through the 16th century to accomodate the silk and precious objects trade and is still today a lively marketplace crammed with stalls of souvenir sellers. The place constantly attracts flocks of tourists due to the famous fountain of the Piglet, on its southern side. Oddly enough, the fountain is not of a piglet but of a wild boar, and is a copy of the Greek marble original on display in the Uffizi Galleries. There are numerous other copies of it around the world: in Belgium, France and even in a hospital in Sydney, Australia. The fountain of the piglet is one the most popular monuments in Florence, a bit like the Mouth of Truth, in Rome. Tradition has it, in fact, that whoever wants good luck should touch the nose of the statue: the nose is shiny from the daily rubbing of hundreds of hands. To complete the operation, you have to place a coin in the boar's mouth and wait until the water makes it fall: if the coin slips through the grate over the drain, all is well, otherwisenothing doing. An ancient tradition connects the Loggia to the origins of a well-known Italian expression: to "end up with your butt on the ground" means to be flush out of money, broke. Set into the center of the pavement, there's a disk that, in Renaissance Florence, functioned as a true scandal stone. Debtors were chained over it, forced to take off their pants and underwear and then repeatedly made to bang their bottom "on the ground". The stone also has a precise historical significance because it's the full-sized representation of a wheel from the 'carroccio', the traditional ox-drawn cart that was the symbol of the Florentine Republic carrying the banners of the Comune onto the battlefield. Around this stone point indicated on the ground, the Florentine troops would gather before combat.