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I met my guide today in the lobby at 9 – are you noticing the pattern? This time he was a he and he was an expat Canadian who was strangely secretive about his past. That just made me more persistent and I finally got it out of him after a few hours. It seems he studied Psychology in college and after graduation he worked in the health care system transitioning psych patients from the institutions in Toronto to living on their own. Something – and he didn’t say what – “went wrong” and he found that he had to leave Canada rather suddenly. (Yikes.) After I finished planning my escape in case he turned on me, I learned that he happened to be dating a woman from Florence who was about to return home to Italy. Conveniently, she and her parents had no problem with him coming home with her so he moved to Florence immediately. That was nine years ago.

After he got here he learned Italian and learned a lot about art history. When I say a lot, I should try to quantify that. He knew more about art history than anyone I have ever met or imagined. He knew something related to art history every five or six feet we traveled. You might think this would get old after a while. Well, you’d be right in the long run. However, I had a ton of nails to pound and I needed a hammer so to speak.

First stop was the Uffizi. Not sure of that spelling but you can look it up and correct me if you’d like. This was the administrative nerve center of the Medici government of Florence and it was made into the first public art museum in Europe (maybe the world?). The guide was very good at distilling the ten lifetimes of touring potential down into about 2.5 hours. He did a wonderful job knitting together a bunch of people and topics about which I know nothing, into a story that I am unable to repeat but which I enjoyed immensely at the time he was telling it. Somehow the parade of names – Giotto, Michaelangelo, Rafael, Botticelli, DaVinci, Bruschellini – all made perfect sense and fit into a screenplay quality storyline. That was this afternoon. Now, a bottle of Chianti later, it’s a tad foggy. But the down arrow on this is that I recommend the Uffizi galleries. Make an appointment and hire a private guide. There’s a big fucking line and the satisfaction you will get from cutting in front of 400 people and being treated like someone special is worth every penny.
After the Uffizi we went to lunch in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit. This church is curiously undecorated for being located in Italy. The entire façade is without any kind of ornament — no sculpture, no color, no nothing. Just tan stucco. It’s a nice change of pace. Anyhow, we had a nice lunch in front of the church at a small café surrounded by Italians (nice sign). Several had their dogs with them (better sign). One had a large red-brown boxer with her. He was very friendly and sniffed my hand. Then he turned around and I saw the biggest set of dog nuts I have ever seen. Why isn’t this fellow clipped? He’s no doubt humping everything in sight at home and leaving his bastard spawn all over town. Sad. Very sad. Castration is an imperative here. Why doesn’t she see that?

After lunch we went to Santa Croce where I fully expected my fetish for saintly body parts to be addressed. Sadly, the good relics are either hidden by the altar or behind scaffolding due to renovation. Apparently a Japanese businessman has pledged to privately fund the renovation of the oldest part of the church – which dates to 13^th century and has never been restored. There is a fair amount of concern over this renovation since this section of the church is the only portion never to have been restored AND it is the only portion of the church never to have suffered any structural or artistic damage to the treasures. I suppose you’d get worked the heck up too over scaffolding in your crib if you had a chunk of the true cross of Jesus sitting in your living room. Beeyotch. J Anyhow, they are all worked up over this in Florence and I say more power to you all. But I am sure the big magic of the true cross will prevail and some kind of holy force field is surrounding the good stuff, protecting it from damage.

A couple of noteworthy sites in the Santa Croce. Michaelangelo’s buried here – against his will. So are Machiavelli and Galileo but not against their will I don’t think. Nice tombs. Michaelangelo’s doesn’t do his career justice. Oh, also, there’s these very interesting frescoes which detail events in the life and spiritual times of St. Nicholas – yes SANTA CLAUS! So his whole deal went way beyond giving presents to kids. That’s just the beginning. This aspect of his goodness was represented with a – Giotto I think – panel depicting St. Nicholas peering in at a father who was getting ready to sell his two small daughters into prostitution because times were so tough. So St. Nicholas drops gold coins through the window to turn things around for the family. That’s a nice thing to do. I asked the guide if the father, having already struggled with the prostitution issue and come out on the “yes” side, decided to sell the girls anyway and keep the gold. He said he didn’t think so but no one had really ever investigated that part of the story. The other panels depicted St. Nicholas flying out over the ocean and rescuing two small boys who had been kidnapped by pirates for god-knows-what purpose and whisking them back to their family on land. A noble deed. Another panel shows St. Nicholas beaming magic rays of power into the hold of a ship to fill it with grain after the grain-merchants aboard had been so kind to give their original stock to the people St. Nicholas was protecting. (They did this on the promise that the magic of St. Nicholas would replenish their grain. This begs the question: if St. Nicholas has magic powers to make grain appear, why not save everyone the production of negotiating and unloading the first pile of grain? Just zap me some freaking wheat Santa Claus!) Impressive on several fronts nonetheless. I’d score his negotiation skills a 10 and his magic skills an 8.

Sadly, no elves or Mrs. Claus in the pictures at Santa Croce. I think it’s fair to ask why not. Don’t you?

The central organizing principle of Santa Croce is the holy cross of Jesus. They are lucky to have one of the only shards of the true cross of Jesus embedded in the altar. Behind the altar and covered by lots and lots of scaffolding due to donor-san’s mandated restoration, is a series of panels depicting the legend of the true cross. OK, just when you thought the Catholic Church couldn’t get kookier, fasten you seatbelt. The legend of the true cross goes something like this… Adam (i.e. the first man) dies. He’s buried. The tree of good and evil continues to grow just like any real tree would. Lots of time passes. People come and go. Lots of significant events happen either on the grave of Adam or using the tree of good and evil. Finally, Jesus gets condemned and without really knowing it they MAKE THE CROSS OUT OF THE TREE OF GOOD AND EVIL. Then they make Jesus march out to be crucified. Where do they decide to kill him? On top of ADAM’s GRAVE which happens to have become Calvary / Golgotha. This is not even soap opera quality storytelling. I mean it’s like the church is daring you to believe them and smirking while they do it.
So the big learning of today was about Galileo, one of my all time favorite historical figures. Even though he recanted the truth, you cannot really blame him for doing so. Freedom and life are valuable and when someone (oh say the someones who both peddle the fable above and have a sword pointed at your face) threatens to take either or both away, you might bend too. So here’s the best part: in the Museum of Science in Florence, they have preserved Galileo’s Middle Finger. I think this rocks. It is so totally a much more appealing form of pagan dead body parts worship – made famous by the Church – and it’s his middle finger. Now I know that you are going to say that the middle finger in Italian culture doesn’t mean the same thing as in America. Right. I know that. But it’s the symbolism of it all that’s so great. In the city full of relics, here’s one for you Pope Sphinctus Contratctus XVI.

OK. Off the soapbox for the little Italian guy who discovered the mundane yet true fact that the earth revolved about the sun.

After the Santa Croce, we wandered the streets a bit – which is always fun – then we went to the Medici tombs. This was relic and dead body central. In the first level were probably twenty or so reliquaries – ornate gold and silver containers for saintly dead body parts. The master of ceremonies was the thigh bone (not kidding) of St. Somebody. There were vertebrae, chunks of unrecognizable flesh, ribs, fingers and more. I cannot get enough of this. It is so odd.

Upstairs is really incredible. There are two major chambers. One containing tombs of four Medici (two pairs of Lorenzos and Guilianos I think) designed and carved by Michaelangelo and another chamber containing I don’t know how many Medici that may as well have been designed by Tony Soprano. The first of these was beautiful for its simplicity, its human-ness, the way it captured the character and movement of the principals in life, and its connection to the visitors. The second of these was a truly ghastly excess of ego and production: forty foot ceilings and every inch of the walls covered with heavy green and red marble and tributes to the Medici as warriors and princes. It is shocking and ugly, but also memorable.

L’accedemia was the final stop. It’s where David is displayed alongside six works by Michaelangelo that came after he finished David. David is really something. He looks more fragile than I imagined. His hands and head look oddly out of proportion but my guide reminded me that David was never meant to be seen from this level. Originally planned for an upper niche in a church, David would have enjoyed a more forgiving distance between him and me. Personally, I really liked the unfinished marbles that are shown next to David more than I liked David. You see in these unfinished works actual examples of what people say about Michaelangelo’s sculpture: he works to free the figures from inside the block. Another way of saying the same thing came from my guide. He said that often people who saw Michaelangelo’s work in progress said it was like seeing a figure in a bathtub as the water was drained. I like that description. I also liked the unfinished works because I could see the very small strike marks of the tools against the marble. Also, one of the blocks was signed by Michaelangelo himself on the back where his mark is still visible on the raw block.

We made a few more stops after that. Nothing that warrants retelling here really. It was a very long day and I learned a ton. I cannot imagine how one small place produced so much in terms of art. It’s really quite mind-blowing.

Tonight there were fireworks in my honor in front of the hotel along the Arno. I think that’s a nice tribute to me. I truly have no idea what prompted this display but I am glad that they have recognized the value I have brought to the city. Seriously, I don’t know what’s going on but there really are fireworks outside the hotel on the river. Like I pretended yesterday with a little wine in my blood, I am pretending again tonight. See you tomorrow.

Category : Travel