Walking Tours of the Great Italian Cities

Walking tours of the great Italian cities

A.M. Kirkby

Published by A.M. Kirkby at Smashwords

copyright 2014 A.M. Kirkby

other travel books by A.M. Kirkby:

Ultreia! The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

Fragments of India (forthcoming)

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Introduction

Some travellers want to wine and dine. Some want to see the landscape. Some want to stretch themselves – to go bungee jumping or white water rafting or (as I foolishly did) subject themselves to the multitudinous inclemencies of the Icelandic climate while hiking shaly, rocky paths and fording glacial rivers.

Others want to immerse themselves in the art and history of Europe's great cities. If you're that kind of traveller, Podtours are for you. We started off making audio tours, but comments from some users have suggested they prefer to have their tour in book form rather than audio. The tours will still take you through the places visited encouraging you to look in detail at the architecture and art; my intention when I wrote them was to give you the same experience as if you were visiting with a very good and learned friend who could point out interesting details personally, rather than listening to a tour guide who's shouting in order to be heard by twenty or thirty people, or reading a regular guide which simply logs the items to be seen (Mona Lisa, three stars: head of Nefertiti, three stars: interesting eighteenth century musical instrument maker's workshop, one star).

I carried out significant research to make these tours. Every site has been visited extensively; contemporary eyewitness accounts found for some events; scholarly works consulted. But I've tried to produce something very different from a dry-as-dust list of dates and artists' or architects' names. I've tried to get behind what artists were really trying to do – what makes their paintings tick – and rather than just look at the masterpieces, I've sometimes found a painting or sculpture by a lesser master that shows the difference between good technique and sheer genius. I've read several of the art and architecture theorists of the Italian Renaissance, and I talk about their ideas in the tours of Florence so that you can see how, for instance, the Florentine palazzo develops as new ideas of architecture influence the original medieval design.

For Venice - a city I've loved since I first went there at Christmas, more than thirty years ago, and spent my first night sleeping on the flour sacks at the back of a baker's shop because I'd arrived at four in the morning and everywhere else was closed – I spent two days tramping the less frequented ways of the Cannaregio, to show a different side to the city from the pomp, circumstance and crowds of San Marco. And for Rome, that immense sprawling metropolis which wears its history like the skins of an onion, I separated the city not just by regions, but by date – so there are separate tours of classical, medieval and Baroque Rome, the latter concentrating on the work of Bernini and Borromini, two artists who represent polar opposites – the theatrical and the intellectual poles of Baroque art.

It was fun researching these tours. I hope you'll enjoy the Italian cities as much as I did.

Chapter 1. Florence – Piazza della Trinità to the Medici Chapels

This tour of the western part of the city takes you past Renaissance palaces, into a couple of fine churches, and through medieval back streets. It ends in the Medici mausoleum – one of Michelangelo’s greatest works, though never finished.

The tour starts in Piazza della Trinità, and the round column in the middle is a good place to begin. From here, you can look around the entire square and get a sense of how it works as a piece of townscape. The column that acts as a focus was set up by Grand Duke Cosimo I – he’d been given the granite column, originally from the baths of Caracalla in Rome, by Pope Pius IV. But on top of the column is not a madonna, as would probably be the case if it were in Rome, but a figure of Justice – a commitment to the rule of law in the Florentine Republic.

There’s an intriguing story that the figure of Justice was modelled on a servant girl who was executed for stealing a string of pearls. Much later, the pearls were found in a jackdaw’s nest – the girl was innocent after all. Rossini surely knew this legend when he wrote his opera The Thieving Magpie – though in this case he made sure the story had a happy ending.

Let’s start a more detailed look at the architecture with the church of the Trinità – a 1590s façade by Buontalenti. It’s an elegant Renaissance façade but to be honest not terribly special. What’s intriguing though is that although the shape, with a high central nave raised above the aisles, shows it’s a church, in fact Buontalenti seems to have designed it as a palace frontage with a church bit on top – you could just remove the higher part, and you’d be left with a perfectly good house front – and just look at that huge string course which divides the whole thing in two horizontally. I wonder whether you could really say that while Gothic architecture grows out of the church, and indeed there's good reason for thinking that the theology of Suger's time had a huge influence on the development of French Gothic architecture, it's secular building and secular ideas that dominate the Florentine Renaissance? The case is not proven – but it's something to think about.

Now if you turn your back to the church and look at the buildings on the other side of the piazza, on the left is the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni. This dates from the 1520s, and it’s probably the first High Renaissance building in the centre of Florence. It has mullioned windows, that is, windows with stone bars dividing the lights, which are unusual in Florence. And it’s definitely influenced by Roman architecture of the time.

It's architecture that works by contrast. There are Roman-style contrasts between concave niches and projecting triangular pediments – these too are rare in Florence – and between round niches on the first floor and square headed ones on the second. But the massive string courses that divide the floors horizontally, and the projecting cornice, are typically Florentine.

The Roman style wasn’t particularly popular in Florence. You’ll see why when we come to the Palazzo Ruccellai – which most Florentines probably still considered the archetype of the Florentine palace. In an act perhaps of pique, perhaps of self-defence, the architect, Baccio d’Agnolo wrote over the main door carpere promptius est quam imitari – roughly, it’s easy to criticise me but I bet you can't do better! The door on Via Porta Rossa, on the other hand, is inscribed with the Salimbeni family’s motto, per non dormire – we never sleep. There’s another nice legend here to go with the thieving magpie – a clever member of the Salimbeni family, knowing a ship was coming into harbour, gave a splendid banquet for his competitors. The next morning he was down at the ship first thing, and acquired the cargo at a bargain price – while his rivals were still sleeping off their hangovers.

It’s a great story and I really don’t care whether it’s true. It probably isn't. Does it matter?

The next palace, in the centre, is the Palazzo Buondelmonte, and this is a stereotype Renaissance Florentine palazzo of just the kind the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni isn't. The Buondelmonte were one of the oldest families in Florence, and were behind the split between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions that divided the city in the middle ages. Buondelmonte del Buondelmonte was engaged to a girl of the Amidei family, but broke off the engagement and instead married Fina Donati, from a rival house. The Amidei, humiliated, bided their time. In 1215, as he rode over the Ponte Vecchio on his way back into Florence, Buondelmonte was stabbed to death by the Amidei. The Buondelmonte became the Guelf faction – and the Amidei, together with the influential Uberti family, became the Ghibellines, starting nearly two centuries of what was in effect a smouldering civil war.

The next palace, towards the bridge, is the Palazzo Spini-Feroni, now the headquarters of the Salvatore Ferragamo fashion house. It was begun about 1290 by Geri degli Spini and it’s one of the best examples of a late medieval palace in Florence – still very much a fortress, with crenellations and a solid, defensive aspect. Note the way it bends to adjust to the line of the road. Only the large windows on the ground floor spoil the early medieval building – they were added in later times, when the need for defence against feuding factions and other families wasn’t so pressing.

But it’s not in any way architecturally naïve. The windows are regularly spaced, the floors are already divided by strong string courses – that later becomes commonplace in Renaissance Florentine palaces – and the stonework is really quite fine. This is where Renaissance Florentine architecture started from, and you can see the story isn't quite as simple as it’s often told. The middle ages didn’t just stop and the Renaissance start – and the middle ages weren't the completely uncivilised times that the Renaissance historians claimed. Instead, there’s a strong continuity between work like this, still purely Gothic, and the early Renaissance.

Now we’re going to take the Via del Parione, opposite the Palazzo Salimbeni, but not for long – the entrance to Santa Trinità is just on the left.