Family Visit

My brother Nelson and his wife Jane made their first-ever visit to Florence this weekend. They stayed at the Hotel Monna Lisa, where we once stayed years ago and which remains charming and delightful, and their friends Steve and Meredith, with whom they had been traveling in Greece and Turkey, joined us for part of the time and some of the touring. This post will discuss the first 24 hours of the visit, which began with lunch on Saturday, a walking tour of the central historic area, and a visit to the Palazzo Davanzati, followed by dinner, and the Palazzo Vecchio the next morning.

Leading up to their visit, Steve had spent quite a lot of the time while going for walks figuring out a condensed but maximally informative mini-tour of Florence for them. He showed them (below) the outside of the

Palazzo Medici-Riccardi and the Palazzo Strozzi also from the outside. We walked around the outsides of the Duomo and Battistery, and then we went into the Palazzo Davanzati to see the whole thing.

The Davanzati were the second of the wealthy merchant families to own and reside in the tall, narrow multi-story house shown behind our group in the top photo, with the loggia at the top: the Davanzati bought it in 1516, perhaps 150 years after it was constructed, and occupied it for over three hundred years. In the early 20th century, after it had suffered a period of neglect, it was renovated by an antiquarian named Elia Volpi as a museum giving an idea of how wealthy Florentine people lived in the earlier centuries. In 1951 it was acquired by the Italian state and kept open as a museum, but by 1995 it was at risk of falling down and had to be closed for very substantial rebuilding and renovations. Not until 2012 was it completely reopened to the public. In fact Steve and I did visit it that year, but we had no idea of how newly reopened it was.

It is charming and informative and is furnished enough to give an idea of what sort of things its occupants lived with--for example, the kitchen was on the top floor, where it presented the least chance of setting the whole building on fire. There are two indoor privies, tiled and decorated and probably the height of luxury in times past. Walls and ceilings are elaborately and beautifully frescoed. There are displays of very fine needlework--embroidery samplers, lots of lace, and garments such as christening gowns. Actual furniture is sparse.

The six of us had dinner at a typical local restaurant, il Cinghiale Bianco (the white wild boar), about a two-minute walk from our apartment to compensate for all the walking of the afternoon. The following morning we met Nelson and Jane at the Palazzo Vecchio, first built as a fortress in the fourteenth century on top of Roman ruins, and serving as the seat of the city council from the beginning, while also later becoming a residence of the city's rulers.

The enormous Hall of the Five Hundred was the imposing seat of the city's republican government, richly decorated with murals glorifying the history of Florence, plus

coffered ceilings, sculptures, and so forth. Above, there are ducal apartments featuring small chapels and wonderful views of Florence, and while the building is mostly a museum, the Mayor of Florence's office is still there and it is the seat of the City Council.

In the afternoon the other couple joined us for our visit to the Uffizi, which will be discussed in the next post.