Romance, Renaissance and Restaurants - Florence

Florence is, simply speaking, one prolonged highlight. The birth of the Renaissance was here and so much of it is well preserved and available to the visitor blessed with formidable stamina.

All roads lead to the magnificent Piazza del Duomo, home of the octagonal Baptistry, the towering Campanile and the Duomo itself, with its magnificent dome and fussy, neo-gothic façade. You will be here a while queuing but this isn’t the worst place in the world to stand and absorb the magnificence of your surroundings. The intricate reliefs, the white, pink and green marble, the sheer scale of these achievements will leave you in awe. I promise.

Other famous sites? Take your pick; the intriguing Ponte Vecchio with its cluster of shops hanging over the Arno, the vast churches of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella resplendent with inspiring frescos and Michelangelo’s David. There’s the Uffizi with its unsurpassed collection of Italian art – Botticelli, Lippi, a bit of da Vinci, a bit of Michelangelo. What’s your fancy?

And then there’s the food. Florence has some fine restaurants and you can get a fabulous meal for under £12-£15 before wine. Try the Hosteria il Caninetto, a stone’s throw from the Duomo, or the Belle Donne for its simplistic charm.

Quick Tips:

Remember, when you go home and friends ask, "Did you see…", it is not shameful to reply, "No. I chose to stroll, take in the ambience and experience the REAL Florence. Next time, maybe."

Try the half-hourly open top bus tour for a mere €19 a day (jump on and off as often as you like). For that you get a recorded commentary and a rest for your weary legs. Much of the medieval centre is off limits to double-deckers but you do go up onto the hillsides to the south and have a marvellous view back over the city. The whole tour takes just under an hour and can be caught at various points around the city including the station.

What else? If you don’t fear heights climb stuff. The view from the top of the Campanile has the slight edge over the dome because it has better quality graffiti and you can see the dome itself! The ascent of the Duomo, however, is an adventure in itself.

Best Way To Get Around:

We arrived by train, having taken a low-cost flight into Pisa. Florence does have its own airport but is not served by the budget airlines. The trains are clean, punctual and reasonably frequent. We never got into the habit of booking seats and, as long as you travel off peak, I don’t think it’s a problem.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence’s main station, is on the edge of the city centre, next to the cathedral of the same name. It only takes 10-15 minutes to stroll to the Duomo in the centre of the city.

Complicated, narrow road systems with a plethora of scooters and what appear to be motorised wheelbarrows make driving into the city an ill-advised option. Parking is scarce and expensive. Just don’t do it, you’d only be adding to the pollution problem.

All this means that this really is a city for enjoying on foot. The Italians were born on scooters and have cat-like reflexes, ducking and dodging around everything and everyone. Unless you’re very confident and at least three-quarters Italian, don’t risk it!!

It is informed opinion that Florence does not really do cheap accommodation. But that was fine because we were honeymooning and cheap was not the look we were going for. Below 3* in Italy and you cannot guarantee your own bathroom and we’re not having that now are we?

The Aurora lies very close to Florence’s main station, the Santa Novella, and as such is not in the most salubrious part of town. That said, for the few nights we were in town we felt no threat when walking around the area at night. The hotel itself is located on the third floor of a grand 19th-century building and is served by its own lift. Do not be put off by the lower floors, the Aurora is a welcome vision of decorative effort and a desire to impress is evident. The staff were most welcoming and, after our long journey, made check in and arrival completely painless. It is a relatively small hotel with fewer than twenty rooms and the effort made in the lobby carried through to our room.

The décor was mostly golden and, teamed with the building’s naturally high ceilings and windows and delicate-looking repro furniture the overall look and feel was that of faded grandeur (my favourite sort of grandeur if truth be told). The room was relatively spacious and was furnished with a big comfy double bed and a well-appointed, clean bathroom. Air conditioning meant that we were never exposed to the noise of the street below.

As for proximity to everything – Florence is a pretty compact medieval town and at the Aurora you are on the northwestern edge of the interesting bits. Santa Maria Novella is just across the Piazza and it’s a 15-minute stroll to the Duomo which can’t be bad.

Criticisms? They weren’t too clear on whether breakfast was included (it was) and the Blonde informed me that I didn’t miss much. Let’s be honest, the Italians don’t really hold with this whole breakfast thing now, do they? Or provide coffee facilities in your room (go and drink it in the nearby café like everyone else!) The shower had a tendency to block and we did create a couple of alarming lakes in the bathroom . . . but then this problem was fixed by the second night so . . .

At €105 a night for the room I don’t think you could do much better . . . and if I craned my neck I could see the Duomo from the bedroom window – well a bit of it at least.

The Blonde’s urge to demolish seafood dominated our hunt for a restaurant on our first evening in Florence. She picked out LOBS, immediately to the west of the station in the heart of the San Lorenzo district.

LOBS (always in capital letters apparently) is very welcoming; terracotta walls with the odd fresco and a quirky décor with an appropriately maritime theme. The waiting staff completed the experience, appearing at your shoulder with that telepathic ease. The menu is extensive and, to help you on your way the odd ‘freebie’ comes your way – a small piece of omelette and a glass of spumante helped us make up our minds.

Remembering her Frenchness, the Blonde opted for the escargot to start while I ordered carpaccio of tuna and swordfish. Presentation options are fairly limited with a bunch of snails, but you’d expect them to be evenly cooked – "Their microwave is on the blink," diagnosed the Blonde, having moved from piping hot to still-frozen snail. My thinly sliced raw fish was distinctly lacking in interest in comparison.

The main courses needed to pick things up a bit here – grilled squid for the Blonde and crawfish for me. Perfectly well sourced, fresh seafood, but lacking any real interest. I guess one should enjoy the flavours for themselves and maybe we chose badly but our meal left us a little underwhelmed. When we were presented with a bill for €110 our whelm reached new depths.

LOBS it would seem is a fashionable restaurant for the Florentine who is going places. It looks good, the fish looks good and people look good eating here. For us, however, not good enough for that money. The Blonde was crestfallen and decidedly apologetic. She hates dining badly, particularly when it’s her choice and resolved to eat only the best from now on . . . or at least be free of blame.

"Right, enough of this climbing things . . . get me my lunch!" The Blonde made her feelings known soon after our descent from the dome.

"I’ve spotted this place . . . ." Every time I thought the Blonde was boning up on the next exquisitely beautiful Florentine landmark she was actually poring through the restaurant section in search of al fresco dining spots in which to indulge her passion for antipasti.

We found the Hosteria il Caninetto just south of the Piazza del Duomo along the Via della Studio. The restaurant has an exceptionally pretty terrace in a narrow and pleasantly shady side street and we arrived just early enough to get a table – it filled up pretty quickly soon after. You pass through a rather grand salon on the way to the terrace . . . but us Northern Europeans don’t dine indoors on holiday. We have long winters at home for that.

The waiters were knowledgeable and efficient – the sort of stately elder gentlemen who make the art look easy and are patient, if a little aloof, while the clumsy foreigner tortures their native tongue.

We opted to share the antipasti misto and received a massive selection of cold meats, carpaccio of fish, roasted vegetables and mozzarella. Accompanied with rustic Italian bread drizzled with olive oil, there really is nothing more delightful. We also shared a sausage and pasta dish washed down with a decent carafe of the decidedly cheap and cheerful house vino. The menu stretched much further with a fine array of meat and fish dishes, and desserts of significant volume. Indeed, several tables around us were working their way through the full list.

The setting is perfect; a pedestrianised enclave tucked just round the corner from the Duomo, a terrace with ivy covered walls and antipasti to be lingered over. It won’t break the bank if you only want a light lunch and the portions are a good size.

The Blonde declared this her favourite restaurant of the ones we tried in Florence, if not on the whole Italian trip. And the Blonde knows about these things.

The Via delle Belle Donne is a narrow street running south east away from the cathedral piazza of Santa Maria Novella. The small but perfectly formed restaurant Belle Donne can be found about halfway down the street.

There is nothing showy about this little place. The single room interior is reached through a low doorway. It is crammed with long tables - patrons get seated wherever they can find space. We took the last table on the narrow terrazzo – an intimate space to say the least. The outside seating consists of low, unforgiving wooden benches with a table that’s only slightly higher. If you have any thighs to speak of whatsoever you will not find these tables a comfortable choice! If you squirm round a bit you’ll be just fine.

This isn’t a restaurant geared towards the tourist market – it is an authentic, ‘local’ kind of place. The menu comes on a photocopied piece of paper and you’ll have to do without a handy English translation. I find this adds a degree of pleasant trepidation to the ordering process ever since ordering a plate of tripe adorned with a boiled potato in Barcelona. There are plenty of things that aren’t in the average phrasebook but sound a bit like shellfish or ‘some kind of meat’. In preparation we ordered a large carafe of the vino del casa just in case some anaesthetising was needed later.

We shouldn’t have worried, our meals were delicious. The safely translated mozzarella and tomato salad was as fresh and delicate as you would wish while the Blonde’s gamborinetti were as prawn-like as anticipated. I followed up with some cheeky little polpettine (meatballs) in a spicy tomato sauce – very tasty although the accompanying pattatine took some patience to wait for. The Blonde was slightly less impressed with her cuttlefish and spinach and I caught her gazing longingly at my meatballs on more than one occasion. Newlyweds, huh?

We lingered late into the evening over crème caramel and coffee. It is the sort of place that makes you want to do that sort of thing. I really loved this place: bustling, atmospheric and authentic. The staff makes you feel at ease through the language barrier and it won’t break the bank either.

If one were to conjure an idyllic European scene in their minds it would almost certainly include a pavement café or bar of some kind, most probably on a wide piazza populated by beautiful people meeting other beautiful people for an espresso. There may well be accordion music, or perhaps an itinerant violinist. The scene has a good chance of being black and white. Where am I going with this? The Piazza della Signoria…I wanted so much for this to be that spot. But it just isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong; if you come to Florence, you must see this Piazza. It is historic; Florence’s own mad monk Savonarola executed his Bonfire of the Vanities here by setting alight the trappings of Renaissance Medician wealth, the imposing 14th century Palazzo Vecchio dominates one side of the square and the Uffizi gallery runs off here too.

You will not want for a pretty café from which to watch the world go by either. Of course, some of the charm is lost when you find yourself dragging out a 5-euro mouthful of coffee over half an hour. The Blonde and I missed breakfast one morning and found ourselves spending 30 euros on an espresso, orange juice and toasted sandwich each (I figure that you have to feel ripped off at least once on holiday). As an aside, I had an espresso stood at a counter in a Piazza café the next morning and paid under a euro – remember that the caffeine fix can be taken without a chair.

Sadly, this isn’t an overly pleasant place to spend any length of time. It is packed from early morning when the crowds start arriving for the Uffizi and there’s scarcely a lull from then on.

The only reason to dwell is because the piazza is the setting of a significant chunk of the city’s statues. It is packed with classics. There’s Michelangelo’s David (a copy in the original’s place; the real one is in the Accademia) with his frighteningly large hands and squint. The Loggia dei Lanzi (an attractive porch n the rear of the Uffizi) is home to bronze Perseus proudly holding Medusa’s head aloft (Cellini clearly paid an unhealthy amount of time working on the gory bits dangling from the neck and severed body). The Rape of the Sabine Women continues the Renaissance obsession with naked muscular forms and a delight in the human form. Outside the Loggia the form continues. Duke Cosimo upon his greenish steed, Neptune and his assorted nymphs, they all make an impression.

But the setting isn’t quite right. The square has lost its authentic paving, the cafes just demand too much and the Italian obsession with graffiti creeps in too much. You’ll see some fabulous things, but I suspect you’ll find your dreamy romantic spot elsewhere.

Being the first day of the holiday, I pushed my luck a little and managed to persuade the Blonde into a second cathedral in one day. She was feeling lenient because of the reckless selection of LOBS the night before (all the best relationships are based on compromise!) and I made the most of it. And so we landed up at Santa Croce.

The church of Santa Croce dates back to the tail end of the 13th century. It is most definitely gothic in appearance with a fussy marble frontage facing onto a large and strangely unwelcoming piazza. It is the ancient home of the Franciscan Order (with Santa Maria Novella home to the big rivals, the Dominicans) and replaced a smaller church on the same site. The ticket booth is situated to the left of the cathedral’s front entrance – a few euros get you in to the church itself and a few more will include the museum next door.

The huge interior is an absolute delight. Frescos, many by the influential Giotto, are in abundance around the walls and tucked away in a row of narrow chapels to the rear. If you have a taste for 14th century devotional art then this, after the Uffizi, is your thing. The church is also famed for being the permanent resting place of many an important Florentine. One wanders over many of the less well known – the top quality berths line the walls. Here you will find Michelangelo, Galileo (eventually . . . his heretical heliocentric nonsense finally forgiven), a monument to Dante (his body is elsewhere), and my personal favourite, Machiavelli. The tombs are grand with some realistic carvings of the great and the good in repose and various worthy inscriptions (hang around a tour guide if you want to know more – there are no handy translations on show).

We reached our ‘devotional art threshold’ relatively quickly and headed out into the first cloister where we stumbled across the delightful Capella dei Pazzi. It is the work of Brunelleschi, carried out some time after he’d made his reputation with the Duomo’s mighty dome. I’m no Renaissance expert but the guidebooks say this typifies the early period when architects and artists were reviving classical Romanesque geometry and detail. It has a temple look about it, reminiscent of the front of the Pantheon, and is seductively peaceful as it seemed to escape many of the crowds.

Florence has an awful lot of churches and, unless you’re a devoted fan of Madonnas, Ascensions and altars, your threshold will be reached before you see them all. If, like us, you just want the cream of the crop (and the Blonde wanted only the crème de la crème – there were cafes to enjoy too you know!), then include Santa Croce.

My first sight of the Duomo was late in the evening on the day of our arrival in Florence. We had glimpsed Brunelleschi’s dome poking above the rooftops but nothing could prepare us for the first ‘full frontal’. In the dark the cathedral has to rely on its sheer bulk to impress as you can only get the vaguest impression of its architectural detail. It is only in the morning you realise why it seemed to glow in the moonlight.

I’ve been raised on gothic north European cathedrals with their hardy, plain stone, a few gargoyles here and there and sad, acid rain-melted apostles. This is poor preparation for the sheer grandeur and opulence of the Duomo, Campanile (bell tower) and octagonal Baptistry of Florence. The exteriors are a vibrant combination of white, pink and green marble – I can hear my mother’s voice now "fussy". It immediately made the Blonde and I recall the book of wedding cakes our local Italian restaurateur (Gino’s of Ruddington -- service with a smile and a killer cappuccino) thrust in our direction a few months earlier.

Begun at the end of the 13th century, the Duomo is testament to the rivalry of the medieval Italian cities and their desire to outdo each other. The building is vast; it will hold 20,000 people with ease. Its interior is in stark contrast to the overdone Neo-gothic façade – cool and sobering. There was a long queue to get inside but it moves along fairly quickly and it’s well worth the short wait. It is in stark contrast to the over blown exterior – calming and relatively plain. Once inside I was drawn towards the octagonal sanctuary, sitting directly under the dome itself. Looking up into the vast dome you can start to make out Vasari’s ‘Last Judgement’ fresco. Study this painting a while; it is marvellously shocking.

If you’re feeling fit, you can climb both the 85m Campanile (around 5 euros) and up to the top of the Dome, a further 6m up (6 euros for the pleasure). I heartily recommend both; you get similar views across the terracotta rooftops of the city but the Campanile has the added bonus of enabling you to see the dome in all its glory. A major part of the thrill of climbing the dome is the route up; a gravity-defying gallery around the inside of the dome (with some rather gruesome views of those who ‘failed’ the Last Judgment –- that poker must smart a little!) and then up between the dome’s outer and inner skins. Brunelleschi constructed this 42m-diameter dome without the aid of scaffolding. The secret lay in separating the relatively thin outer skin from a self-supporting inner layer constructed using a herringbone brick arrangement. It is fascinating to observe the structure as you ascend the sloping staircases and duck into successive chambers.

The regulation of visitors means that the top of the dome is relatively spacious (compare it with the top of St. Peter’s if you ever get to Rome) and you can enjoy a marvellous view across the rooftops. Sensible city planning as prevented the encroachment of tower blocks and other modern obscenities. And you also pick up a pleasant breeze that’s unnoticeable at street level.

The Duomo is an astonishing structure; completely out of proportion with the rest of the city, it is a marvel to behold and be a part of for a little while. Florence is full of self-aware beauty and the Duomo is the vainest of them all, but it really is as gorgeous as it thinks it is!

My first pass at the Uffizi was on a Monday and discovered that this wasn’t a good day to tackle Florence’s museums and galleries – most being decidedly shut. The Blonde looked rather pleased; more time for cafés and people watching, less of this ghastly being inside nonsense. She does despair of me sometimes.

So up at the crack of sparrows on Tuesday morning for me (a lazy late espresso in the Piazza della Signoria for the Blonde) and down to the banks of the Arno to join the pre-opening queues. The Uffizi tries to regulate visitors to a steady 600 at a time, which means long waits most of the day (even for the variety of pre-booked tickets on offer). I had to wait a mere half an hour and it’s not such a bad place to wait on line.

The gallery is arranged around the top floor of the Uffizi, a stern, two winged building built to house the Florentine government in the days of the Medici (Uffizi meaning ‘offices’). The majority of the collection is a testament to the wealth of the powerful Medici clan. They commissioned a large chunk of the output of Florence’s Renaissance masters and many exciting pieces are on show here.

The art work is arranged chronologically in a series of rooms linked by a grand ‘U’ shaped corridor which links the wings via a raised gallery next to the Arno. You are sternly encouraged to follow the time line – going back on yourself to revisit is met with severe opposition from the curators.

The sequence begins with serious Gothic art from the Tuscan school of the 13th and 14th centuries; mainly altarpieces and invariably displaying devotional scenes. Being something of a heathen, I hurried through much of this, only pausing to note an interesting tendency to portray biblical figures in contemporary clothing and locations. The Tuscan school clearly didn’t have ‘perspective’ on its syllabus, which must have been something of a frustration to its pupils.

The birth of the Renaissance in Florence is represented in the next set of rooms as artists got to grips with geometry and the paintings begin to become more ‘natural’. Of course, they didn’t give up on the religious stuff (I guess the artists knew which side their bread was butter on) and you pass a steady stream of ‘Madonna con bambinos’ (with bambino being of varying degrees of blondeness and chubbiness) interspersed with the odd pieta, annunciation and adoration of the magi thrown in for good measure.

I’m being flippant here – there are some incredible pieces of art here. I could barely get in the same room as della Francesca’s famous portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino but I did manage to get ahead of the decidedly impolite tour groups and enjoy some precious minutes with Botticelli’s glorious ‘Birth of Venus’ and slightly edgy ‘Primavera’. These rooms (10-15) house most of the highlights – in da Vinci’s unfinished ‘Adoration of the Magi’ one can see how the artist constructed the work and the facial expressions depicted resonate.

And so it goes on. There is a sumptuous octagonal room given over to Medici family portraits and works from further afield mapping the spread of the renaissance across Europe. It is well worth dwelling on the Arno corridor for a short while; it affords great views of the hills outside Florence and the Ponte Vecchio below and to the right. The second corridor kicks off with a classic from Michelangelo – Madonna con bambino with a twist! A rare appearance by Joseph means the bambino is daringly lifted onto a shoulder. I scoff but the vibrancy of this painting will catch your breath.

The final run is through the Medici’s later acquisitions, taking in Caravaggio, van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt. I found this section very interesting; subjects broadened out somewhat – you can have too much Renaissance. After a couple of hours I broke and made for the café at the end of the second corridor. Spend a few euros and enjoy the views across the city.

Like any gallery, the Uffizi has its ‘dry’ sections between the highlights but this was the centre of one of the most significant artistic periods in history and it is, overall, well worth the time and effort.

I found the Blonde sitting in the sun with her shades on, a slightly bemused look on her face. She tried to be grateful for the souvenir postcards, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. "Time for a glass of vino?"