Our Last Day in Florence

It's hard to believe that we've already been here for 2 weeks!  Tomorrow we get up bright and early to catch a train to Rome and start the second half of our program.  It's going to be quite a change for everyone -- the students have come to really love Florence, and they're not sure what to expect in Rome.  Neither am I, actually.  I don't know the city very well at all, so it's going to be an adventure for all of us.

I've been a little under the weather for the past few days, so I haven't done a great deal of wandering around.  I did take the students to see the Duomo, at last -- it's the most iconic building in Florence and we've been staring at the dome for 2 weeks now.  Unfortunately, a lot of the inside was blocked off for some reason so we couldn't even go and stand under the dome itself, which kind of sucked.  We did visit the Baptistery as well, though, which is possibly the oldest building in the city (it's been there for about a thousand years, literally) and so beautiful.

We had a free day on Friday, and I wandered over to the Bargello, which is just up the street from my apartment and which has one of the best collections of Renaissance sculpture in the world.  It was just as I'd remembered, and I had a great time wandering around, sneaking photos when the guards weren't looking.  Then I strolled over to the church of San Marco, which has a very cool museum that has preserved the original cells that the monks lived in centuries ago.  The walls are decorated with beautiful images by Fra Angelico, one of the best painters of the Renaissance.  This was also the monastery where the monk Savonarola began to preach against the excesses of 15th-century Florence, culminating in the famous Bonfire of the Vanities in which the wealthy as well as artists burned their possessions as a gesture of piety.  Of course, Savonarola was burned alive himself a couple of years later.  Ahh, the Renaissance.  Good times.

Yesterday we were going to visit the villa where Galileo was confined after his trial in 1633, and where he died in 1642.  I was really excited, as the house has been closed for years and years and we were going to be the second group to actually see inside.  Unfortunately, our day was ruined by Florentine public transportation.  The first bus we had to catch was 30 minutes late, which meant that we had to wait another 30 minutes for the second bus.  We ended up being an hour late for our scheduled tour, and no one answered the bell when we finally arrived.  I was crushed.  The poor students put a brave face on things, and we ended up having a class session sitting on Galileo's front steps, which ain't so bad, but I was really sad to have missed out on such a cool opportunity.  Ah well.

A few photos:

Random shot of the oldest church in Florence, tucked away in a tiny piazza.

The roof of the Baptistery, covered in an incredible mosaic.

Courtyard of the Bargello, which served as a prison for centuries before it became a national museum.

Donatello's David, the first nude sculpture of the Renaissance and one of the most famous bronzes in the world.

Jason and the Golden Fleece.

A monk's cell at San Marco, with one of Fra Angelico's paintings on the wall.

More Fra Angelico.

The outside of Villa Il Gioiello, the house where Galileo lived and died.

A bust commemorating "the divine Galileo."


Today is cleaning and packing, and perhaps a last stroll around, though it looks like it might rain.  I'm going to miss Florence, but to be honest I'm starting to get really annoyed by the swarms and swarms of tourists that are literally everywhere here.  Rome will have lots of tourists as well, of course, but it's a little more spread out and I don't think it will be as bad.  I guess we'll see!

More to come from Rome!