Next Time You Are In Florence

Here are some tips you won't find in Rick Steves' travel guide for your next visit to Florence.

If you are going to be here for more than 3 days, you should really consider becoming an "Amici degli Uffizi" -- Friend of the Uffizi. For 50 Euro it gets you unlimited free admission into most of the biggies in Florence: the Uffizi, Academia, Pitti, Bargello and Medici Chapel. But the real benefit is that as a "friend" you don't have to make a reservation and you can jump in front of the long lines -- and trust me the lines are long. Some people wait up to 2-3 hours just to get into the Uffizi to see the Botticellis, Leonardos and Titians.

Which leads me to my next tip: Don't go to the Uffizi until 5:00 pm. By that time most of the tourist have left and there are only a few annoying tour group roaming the galleries. The museum closes at 6:35 pm which means you may need to make two trips to see everything, but being able contemplate the "Birth of Venus" and "Venus of Urbino" without dodging a bunch of bobbing tourist heads is a much more pleasant way to experience the art.

The Uffizi is really amazing - it's a historical stroll through the making of Western Art. You start in the first room with the huge gold Chimabue, Duccio and Giotto altarpieces. They all depict the same thing - a Madonna and Child with eight angles. But, right there in that first gallery you can see the transformation from the 2-dimensional "icon" of the Byzentine era to a fully-formed 3-dimensional representation of the human form. Stop for a minute and really look at that main Giotto altarpiece - you're looking at the beginning of art.

From there it's a mad dash across 200 years to the peak of the Renaissance. In the next room there's the first experiment with one-point perspective (Lorenzetti didn't get it quite right, but he was pretty close). On that wall over there it's the first time someone actually put a sky with some clouds in the background of a painting (nice work Fabriano). And the next room has the first nude woman of 1,000 years that isn't Eve (yes, Botecceli's Birth of Venus). Very quickly the Florentine artists mastered linear perspective with mathematical accuracy and how to show emotion on a flat surface (thank you Leonardo and Michelangelo).

Can I stay and get a job as an Uffizi tour guide?


Today's Itinerary
--"American Breakfast" at the cafe
-- Duomo Museum with the real Gates of Paradise and Donatello's Magdalene (see pic)
-- "The" David, Michelangelo's Slaves and the Maplethorpe exhibit at the Academia
-- Todd's pizza place for lunch
-- One more trip to San Lorenzo market
-- 5:00 pm stroll through the Uffizi
-- Pesto pasta dinner in our cute apartment