Woke up to a Florence morning. Zhi Xian was gone, went for a morning jog. After washing up, went down for breakfast. Italian breakfast is simply croissant, bread, and coffee. There’s cereal as well, and milk and chocolate. Almost English like. Simply put, Italian breakfast is simple, light and more suited to Asian style.
We walked along the river to the Uffizi. It’s the famous art gallery, comprised mainly of renaissance art and sculptures. Sculptures can be divided into pre- and post Constantinian, categorized by the covering up of groins for the sake of conservative Roman Catholic Church. Largely enjoyed the Roman mythological sculptures, and Christian art simply bored me to death. The queue into Uffizi is very long, and it took us 30 minutes to get in. No student price for us, how sad. We met some people from United States, and had a great chat with them. But culture wise, Uffizi is a good collection, though I’m more interested in roadside water colour paintings. Bought a black and white painting for Huijie for her birthday on the 19th, though I know I’ll give it to her only after Italy.
After Uffizi, it was plainly a walk to some catholic churches. In the Roman way of architecture, they built the churches with mud and bricks, after which they add on a layer of white marble with sculptures on the outside. Nice but kind of fake. We found a Catholic church with a Jewish Star of David, what a reminder of the roots of Christianity.
The duomo was next. In Florence, the duomo is a must-see for every tourist alike. Crowded as usual. However, it is said that the duomo here has the 3rd longest nave in the world, after Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican and Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. Come to think of it, I’ve yet to visit Saint Paul’s Cathedral despite staying a bridge away. Need to make a reminder to visit before returning to Singapore. Seems like I’m immensely submerged in Christianity ever since I came to Europe. Anglican in UK, Catholic in Italy. Somehow, I may need a Buddhist monastery to complement my experience. And that seems way out of the topic here. Ok, back to the duomo. The duomo is somewhat similar to the one in Pisa, only grander, more detailed, and the most interesting thing is the presence of the sculptures of twelve apostles beside Madonna and infant Jesus. In case it’s not clear enough, Madonna is the name given to Virgin Mary, also known by the Italian name Maria. And it definitely is big. Catholic churches and cathedrals seems to be much much more elaborated in their architecture as compared to Anglican. And they focus a lot more on their ceilings and domes. Well, it’s renaissance art again, a cathedral full of them.
We decided to queue up for their service, since Janice, Zhi Xian and Ivan are Christians and none of them have been to a Catholic mass. But in the end, we realized our queue wasn’t for the service but for the climb up the dome instead. 6 euros and no student price as usual. Florence is unsympathetic to poor students like us. The climb up consists of 463 steps. What a nightmare. I still remember climbing stairs in Edinburgh castle and Warwick castle and doing it round and round a dome is simply different. Our path slants to the side and we had to constantly look out for our way, not to mention there’s no separate path for both entry and exit. Hence, we could be hustling along the steps for 10 minutes and suddenly stopping for some people to exit the dome. Quite a weird experience no doubt.
The top of the dome is unspeakable. Not that it’s bad, but I can find no words to describe what nice scenery we had up there. It’s simply a paranoma of the entire city. No doubt, the dome is the highest man-made point in Florence, and we had a good view over where we want to go next. More importantly, we saw that the south of the river seems very interesting with greenery and fortresses. Good for tomorrow I think. Actually, I’m more concerned with how dangerous it was for the builders of the past to build the duomo. Without the fence, the height is heart-stopping in itself. It’s even higher than the tower beside the duomo, which we made the right choice not to go. We probably would have regretted climbing up the tower anyway.
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