The tragic irony of tourism is that it destroys the things it celebrates. Once someplace makes it onto every guidebook’s “must see” list, the experience of visiting is often more about endurance than enjoyment. While not yet as bad as Venice, summer sightseeing in Florence and Siena now falls solidly into the hard work camp. I suspect San Gimignano is the same, though we didn’t visit on this trip.
People, of course, have been complaining about crowds in Florence since Lucy Honeychurch snagged her Room with a View, but a world of relatively cheap international air travel, plus the ever-escalating numbers of visitors from Asia, has pushed Tuscan tourism to a place unrecognisable from my first visits as a teenager. Nothing sold out back then, you didn’t need to get tickets for anything in advance and all the churches were free. Now there’s a world of long queues, you won’t get in to the Uffizi without a reservation and you’re generally being forced to plan your days; something at odds with the serendipity of discovery I’ve always found marks a good Italian holiday.
SIENA BASICS
In Siena, for example, we managed to get tickets when we walked up to the cathedral at 10:30. Ironically, it was faster to buy online than wait in the queue, though you then still need to get in another queue to redeem your online purchase for a paper ticket, and another to get into the cathedral itself. At this last queue, individual ticket holders have to wait as group tours get priority. (An early lesson for my friends in why everything takes longer in Italy than you think it will.) Inside, there’s now a strictly enforced one-way system where people shuffle by the famous bible stories laid into the floor in pietra dura mosaic. I understand why they’ve had to take such measures. I swear the 500-year-old floors look significantly more worn than they did just 30 years ago. But any sense of the sacral is gone and there’s no way, beyond the arial view published on the cathedral’s web site, to get a sense of the majesty of the total scheme because as a visitor you can’t get a view that stretches more than 20 feet without a wall of humanity forming an artificial horizon.
Siena’s cathedral is still one of the great sights of Italy, and the Piccolomini Library off to one side would make my list of the ten most beautiful rooms in the country, with its vivid murals bringing the accomplishments of the donating family to glorious life. Give me this over the Sistine Chapel any day. There are still spots where you can sit down in the main church, let the crowds wash around you and give yourself over to quiet contemplation of an individual story on the floor, or the majestic painted roof. But if you don’t slow down, pull yourself out of the queue and make yourself really look, it’s easy to become one of the plodding masses. Shuffle by. Take photo. Post on social media. Tick off list in guidebook.
While a prompt start meant we got straight (more or less) into the cathedral, by early afternoon first admission into the town hall to see the famous murals of good and bad government required a wait of two hours. A leisurely lunch at Ristorante al Mangia, overlooking the Campo (the main town square) was just as much a part of the day’s experience as the sightseeing. As was wandering through Siena’s shops, which seem to have a higher proportion of both air conditioning and variety than do other towns in Tuscany. It’s almost as if locals still live and shop here, something that’s difficult to believe of much of Florence’s historic centre these days.
Fortunately for today’s visitors, Florence’s leading families embraced conspicuous consumption. They felt that decorating public spaces was just as important as their private palazzi. So even if you don’t spend the time or money to get inside anything, you can still have an excellent day drinking in atmosphere. The friends I accompanied were in Italy for the first time, and all about introductions. They wanted to get the feel of a place and a sense of what they might want to return to see. A broad range of tastes, one teenager, and short attention spans meant hours looking at paintings in the Uffizi or frescoed ceilings at the Pitti Palace would be a waste of time and money. Florence needed to be a taster tour.
ELLEN’S FLORENTINE WALKING TOUR
We started at the main Santa Maria Novella train station. It’s still one of the ugliest and most crowded in Europe, but has recently been much improved by a tram line that comes in from the airport in 20 minutes, and from a park-and-ride branch on the main motorway to the southwest. The €1.50 fare is a bargain and this is an ideal option for people coming on a city break who don’t plan to have a car.
First we walked to the front of the church that names the station to get an introduction to the inlaid pastel fantasy of marble characteristic of Tuscan church facades. Then to bigger examples: the duomo, baptistery and bell tower. The outdoor masterpieces here are arguably better than anything you can see inside: the sculptural scenes on the baptistery doors made by Ghiberti and Pisano, Giotto’s extraordinary bell-tower and Brunelleschi’s miraculous dome. You probably don’t even need a map here because, like a leaf falling onto a stream, the flow of people will just push you down the Via dei Calzaiuoli toward the Piazza della Signoria. This main drag between cathedral and town hall is central artery of Florentine history and commerce. Step out of the flow to admire the outside of the Orsanmichele church. Once again, the best stuff is on the outside. In a race to show off their wealth and good taste, various guilds sponsored each niche around the above the streets, filling them with masterpieces of renaissance sculpture by Donatello, Ghiberti, Gianbologna and Verrocchio. Some are now copies of precious masterpieces moved indoors but, unlike the awkward doppelgänger of Michaelangelo’s David in front of the Palazzo Signoria, I challenge anyone who’s not an art historian to spot the fakes.
If you’ve still got the energy, resist the temptation to look at the Piazza Signoria at the top of the street, and instead turn right. In a block you’ll run into the Mercato Nuovo, a beautiful loggia open on four sides and stuffed with local crafts. Rather reassuringly not much has changed here. It’s still the same densely-packed warren of leather goods, luxury textiles, silk scarves and ties. Most seem still to be made in Italy and prices are fair. I think modern tourism and social media has killed the world where no prices are displayed, traders started high and a good negotiator could haggle down to great deals. Prices now are more uniform and haggling less expected, though you can still get a good discount if you deal in cash. If you’re going beyond Florence, however, keep in mind that most of the Tuscan hill towns have leather stores carrying similar ranges and prices get cheaper the further off the beaten track you go.
Now, assuming you started between 10 and 11, it’s time for lunch. Head back to the Piazza Signoria and grab a table with a view at one of the restaurants that extends onto the square. To be honest, which one doesn’t matter; they’re all much-of-a-muchness, with a menu of tourist classics competently prepared and priced 20% above what you could get in the next street. You’re paying for the view, which was excellent from our table at Bar Perseo in the northwest corner of the square. This isn’t just lunch, it’s seated sightseeing. While relaxing in shade, and under steady puffs of cooling mist, you can admire the towered town hall that started as a home of oligarchy dressed up as democracy, and devolved to a Medici palace. Appreciate the Loggia Lanzi beside it, a glorious outdoor sculpture gallery. You can see the edge of the Uffizi, and all of the other stately buildings around the square. Most are renaissance but a few new ones dropped into the scene in the 19th century, built in the same style. There’s lots of other decorative sculpture, including a brash fountain of Neptune and an impressive bronze of Cosimo the Great (the first Medici grand duke) on horseback. Use your imagination to conjure up the scenes of the Bonfire of the Vanities, held here in 1479 when radical monk Savonarola convinced the town’s rich to incinerate their favourite objects of culture. Though I prefer to imagine the burning at the stake a year later of that same revolutionary, when popular opinion turned and they torched him, too. When it comes to book and art burners, karma is a good thing.
SHOPPING AND BACKSTREETS, FROM THE PITTI PALACE TO SANTA CROCE
From here, walk over to and across the Ponte Vecchio. It remains a great place to buy gold but research prices before you buy. The craftsmanship and quality is unique here. But if you’re going to buy it’s good to be fluent in the price of 24k gold, so you know what you’re paying for the art on top of the weight. Continue up the street to take a look at the Pitti Palace, contemplating the Medici family’s evolution from merchants to royals. On your way back, pop your head into Bottega del Mosaico on the left side of the street as you return to the bridge. This is one of the few workshops and stores left that produces and sells the ancient art of pietra dura. Literally “hard stone”, it’s a type of mosaic made with pieces of highly polished, semi-precious stones like lapis lazuli and malachite. It’s typical to see tabletops of the stuff in museums, palaces and aristocratic homes across Europe, but this is the only place I know where you can buy something for yourself. Though still expensive … you’re paying for a rare skill and time-consuming craft … small pictures for the wall or pendants from your neck are in the realms of normal budgets.
From here you’re walking back over the bridge, turning hard right as soon as you cross and walking along the river to the back of the Uffizi. There’s a balcony that curves out over the rowing club on the river bank below that will give you your best photo of the Ponte Vecchio on this route, and will let you spot the Vasari corridor. That is the private route the Medicis built to get from the Palazzo Signoria to the Pitti Palace without ever setting foot in the street, visible when you spot the line of matching windows along the route..
Walk through the inner court of the Uffizi and then head for Santa Croce. This L-shaped route from the Pitti to Florence’s Franciscan basilica has some of the nicest shops you’ll pass. In addition to the mosaic store, look for small places with beautiful marbleised paper, handmade notebooks and other high end stationery; higher-end leather goods than you’ll find in the outside markets; wooden toys and all things Pinocchio (it’s a local story); shoes and fine woollens.
It’s at Santa’s Croce that the ticketing system frustrates me the most. This is my favourite church in Florence, and no proper tour would be complete without a peak at the famous memorials (Michaelangelo, Dante, Machiavelli), Giotto’s Bardi Chapel (the Renaissance starts here!) and the Pazzi Chapel (one of the most beautiful little buildings ever designed). The official Florentine leather working school is also here, with a shop that offers things beyond the ordinary. But it’s probably not worth €8 and a queue unless you want to linger for at least an hour. It’s still worth the wander this way, however, to glimpse the Pazzi Chapel through the cloister gates, see the big statue of Dante (the town that exiled him cashing in his fame) and contemplate the playing ground of “calico storico”. It’s here, once a year, that opposing teams from Florentine neighbourhoods play a ruthless game of football with no rules, regular bloodshed and rumours of convicts being sprung from jail for the event to beef up teams. A friend of mine saw the legendary game when one brute bit another’s ear off.
From there, navigate your way to the Bargello. Take the Via Torta out of the side of the square opposite the church and you’ll come upon Vivoli, a family-run ice cream shop in operation since 1929 that many locals swear by as the best in town. It’s just to the right of he first crossroad on Via del Isole delle Stinche, a name that gives as much delight to small children as the ice cream. No Italian summer afternoon is complete without a gelato break.
Lick and walk, gazing up at the walls and tower of the Bargello. It appears a smaller copy of the Palazzo Signoria and was once the town prison. Now it’s my favourite museum in Florence. Full of decorative arts like pottery and sculpture, consider this the V&A to the Uffizi’s National Gallery. But this tour isn’t about going inside anywhere. You need to keep moving.
At this point there’s a choice. If you still have energy, you can head up to the Medici-Riccardi palace, checking out what the banking family built for themselves when their money was new and they were still competing with other families. It’s an impressive facade and has influenced countless buildings down the ages. From there head to San Lorenzo, the original parish church of the Medicis. Michelangelo’s famous Medici tombs and library are here, but you’re not going in. Instead, have a poke around the sprawling leather market outside. Similar stuff to the market you saw before lunch, but more of it.
We were worn down by the heat, however, so skipped these last two stops and headed back to the train station. Whether or not you choose the final extension, that’s a solid circle tour of the heart of the historic town centre that gives you a taste of everything without paying for admission. Skipping entry queues and stopping frequently for meals and drinks makes it pleasant despite the crowds, and gives first-time visitors a sense of what makes this heart of the Renaissance beat.
Seeing those crowds, however, has hardened my resolve that there’s only one way to do Florence any more if your objective is culture. Come in the winter, when the weather is bad and schools are in. Fly direct to Florence, take the tram in and settle into a hotel in the historic centre. Pre-book tickets to cultural institutions and sink into them for long, unhurried visits.
But that is a very different kind of trip. Having consumed the amuse bouche of the Tuscan capital, we were heading off the beaten track. The rest of our Italian meal would be picturesque drives, wine hot spots and lesser-known hill forts. Read on for more.
