Baron in Italy, Wed, 18 Dec 2019 | written by Jemma
Jemma and Simon at a City, Museum, Temple, UNESCO site in Europe, Italy

Early start this morning – lots to see!

First stop was the Uffizi gallery. This place is so vast! We started off thoroughly looking at all the Roman sculptures at the beginning of the gallery, but after 4 hours there, we were so exhausted and overloaded with art that we dashed through the final rooms, and even missed a Bernini by mistake. Uffizi must have the world’s largest collection of Botticelli paintings. It holds the famous Birth of Venus and the Primavera – which were both amazing to see in real life.

This was also the day that we saw artworks by all of the turtles! Uffizi had 3 Da Vinci’s, plus a Michaelangelo painting. Of course it had a bunch of Raphael’s, but so does everywhere in Florence! The Donatello’s were seen later that day. Uffizi also has the Medusa shield by Caravaggio – it’s so awesome seeing these famous works of art!!

This gallery really is amazing, I wish we didn’t just have a day ticket and could go back another day, as there’s just too much to see. Otherwise we start to feel ourselves getting complacent about all this incredible art, this level of excitement is unsustainable!

I’ve definitely had enough of Madonna & baby JC icons…

We ate our lunch on the Uffizi terrace with a nice view of Palazzo Vecchio.

Next, we walked to Bascilica de Santa Croce. This church has a beautiful facade by Brunelleschi, great frescos and a couple of sculptures by Donatello.

It also contains the tombs of Michaelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli.

Simon had to do a work call so we found a cafe that had free WiFi, but their signal was so terrible that he ended up doing the call from the doorstep and using the city WiFi – he gets away with so much when working remotely! Whilst he was doing this, I went for a wander in the nearby Christmas market and got whammed!!

Afterwards we walked to Ospedale degli Innocenti, one of the first major public Renaissance buildings, again by Brunelleschi. We sat on the steps and ate some chocolate, as we were in need of sugar before the next gallery.

After this, we went to the Academy Gallery and saw the actual original David by Michaelangelo. This was such a highlight as it’s so magnificent. There were other great sculptures either by or attributed to Michaelangelo, the Slaves, which appeared as if the figures were trying to break out of the stone slabs.

This gallery had many more artworks, but we viewed them super quickly. More early Renaissance paintings?! More altarpieces?! More Madonna’s?! Jesus! We were just broken, and couldn’t appreciate another one of those, just too many!

We then met up with our Beltane friend, Giulia, and her boyfriend. They took us to this great Love Craft bar with delicious themed cocktails.

Back to the Airbnb for sleeps. Glorious day! Ah, and Simon had to go move the car – turns out tomorrow they are cleaning the street where we parked.