January 16, 2026

January 16, 2026

Since Florence is so busy with tourists wanting to see the same highlights, I had to make several reservations for this part of the trip. Don’t these tourists know they should be staying home in the winter?

We are out the door right after breakfast. Florence is famous for being the birthplace of the Renaissance. On our way I made a brief stop at the Baptistery to show Aimee the famous doors that are considered ground zero for the Quattrocento (the 1400’s) when the Renaissance in Florence flourished. In 1401 23-year-old Lorenzo Ghiberti won a competition for new bronze paneled doors in the new (reborn) 3-D artistic style. He later would create a  second set of doors even better that Michelangelo termed the “Gates of Paradise’.

We quickly continue on past the main square to the Uffizi Art Gallery. This museum has the finest collection of Renaissance art anywhere. This building was built to be the Uffizzi (offices) of the Medici Duke who ran Florence in the 16th century. The long halls of this office building are filled with Roman statuary collected by the Medici family. The Tribune was probably the room most meant to wow Medici visitors.

Aimee and I run through the extensive collection mostly concentrating on the flowering of the Renaissance. Medieval art was strictly religious, flat, and full of gold ornamentation. It could be highly detailed but usually very stylized.

There were several artists (eg Giotto) that laid the groundwork for the basic tenets of Renaissance art but the big three who made the most advancements were Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. They brought the subjects to life, adding volume, linear perspective, atmospheric perspective, and Sfumato painting techniques. These all combined to make the paintings look more realistic and 3-D.

Florence was the epicenter of the Renaissance because of the rise of the merchant class who made money in wool and banking and established a pseudo-democratic capitalistic republic. Unfortunately at the end of the Quattrocento, one of the Medici reasserted feudal control and Florence faded away. The next half of the museum has lots of famous artwork that the Medici collected but most of it was created elsewhere.

Several years ago while reading Dan Brown’s novel Inferno, I learned about the Vasari Corridor. So Aimee and I signed up for a guided walk at noon. When Cosimo I crushed the republic he feared assassination so he had his architect Vasari build a private walkway from his office here across the Arno River to his new home. We make the same walk from the Uffizzi, atop the Ponte Vecchio bridge, past his private chapel above a church. The walk ends in the Boboli Gardens adjacent to his Pitti Palace.

We are getting hungry so we buy a Proscuito and Mozzarelli sandwich at the Boboli cafe. It is very tasty on to-die-for bread. Aimee insists also in having another Italian Hot Chocolate.

Since the sun is shining we decide to take a walk through the vast Boboli Gardens. It is hilly with lots of grottoes, and a few fountains, but we find it mostly boring. It does have a couple spots with good overlooks of Florence across the river.

We made our way back to the hotel. Since we are close to the Basilica del Carmine, we stop in to see if we can see their Brancacci Chapel. It is supposed to be the ‘Sistine Chapel’ of the early Renaissance. We really luck out and arrive just in time for the only guided tour in English today. Aimee and I both enjoy the art lecture in this tiny chapel. It was mostly painted by two artists with the first name Tommaso (Maso for short). Their nicknames were Little Tom (Maso-lino) and Ugly Tom (Masa-ccio). They worked  together to create a “visual story” about the life of St. Peter.

On the way back to the hotel we popped into the Ognissanti Church to see its nice artwork. It has a beautiful ceiling fresco and a nice crucifix by the early Renaissance painter Giotto. But I am most intrigued by Ghirlandaio’s St Jerome in his Study. It has one of the earliest depictions of eyeglasses which are thought to have been invented here in Florence. Capitalism not only released an art revolution but one of science too (think Galileo). Weirdly the church seemed to be ten degrees colder than outside.

For dinner we had soup and potstickers at a Chinese restaurant around the corner.