Florence photos

The Duomo took my breath away when I first saw it. It towers over the city and the ornate details of all the different shades of marble are like nothing I’d ever seen. I can’t even imagine the time, and money, and talent that it must have taken to build

I spent most of my day at the Basilica de San Croce. It holds Michelangelo’s tomb, Galileo’s tomb (which is pretty elegant – I wonder how long after his death it took for him to be really celebrated), and Machiavelli’s tomb, among others. There are still frescoes inside from centuries ago as well as a stunning art collection.

The Piazza della Signorina is most famous for Neptune’s fountain and Michelangelo’s David (the original now being inside the Uffizi for safekeeping), but there is also the Signorina’s statuary. Some of the statues are from the second century AD – nearly ten times as old as the United States. And they’re just standing out in the open. I spent a while just standing in the middle of the square imagining what it was like to be there hundreds of years ago. I saw some children playing on the steps of the Basilica de San Marco and realized that five hundred years ago, there were probably other children doing the exact same thing.

The Ponte Vecchio, with its famous overhanging shops. Originally lined with noisy butcher shops, the Medicis had them replaced with silver and gold smiths who, to this day, sell extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily expensive jewelry to passersby. If I lived here, I would still be rowing.

I like this photo. It’s got potential if I retouch it a bit. I would have preferred to take it from another angle, but access to the cemetary was restricted.

Sunset from the Piazzale Michelangelo.