(Only) A Day in Tuscany

Last day of what has turned out to be a rather exhausting vacation! The longest tour of the trip, and because of that we booked the small group version of the excursion to Florence and Pisa. Now, we knew going in that it wouldn't be nearly enough time to see much more than the bare highlights, but at least we would know what to look for when we do a land tour of some kind in Tuscany - which is definitely on the list.

Tuscany is known for producing great red wines, from Chianti to Brunello di Montalcino, all from the sangiovese grape, but they are also big producers of sunflower oil, used in biodiesel fuel, olive oil, and pine nuts that are harvested from Umbrella Pine trees.

Of course, the very best Italian marble also comes from Tuscany, in the mountains overlooking the sea. Marble is created by a chemical reaction at extremely high heat, and the marble in these mountains is so dense and strong that it takes 4 hours to cut through a single inch! There are some marble quarries that have been operating for over 400 years - the same quarries that Michelangelo visited to choose the specific blocks for his sculptures.

Sunflower fields

The Tuscan countryside

An olive tree grove on a hillside

 The history of Florence fills numerous volumes, so even a condensed version would be very hard to follow. Suffice it to say that Florence was established by the Romans, built to its prosperous state mainly by the Medici family that rose to prominence as bankers but were also great patrons of arts and sciences, and is still the cultural centre of Italy because of their influence and a few fortunate events in their history. The most important one was that the very last Medici signed a pact in her will that all of the Medici holdings, which were a great many, would be left to the city of Florence provided that none of them would ever be moved away. That's why there are almost as many museums as churches in Florence, including some for Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo.

From an overlook - the iconic Duomo cathedral

The Ponte Vecchio, or Old Bridge

The Church of Santa Maria della Croce

 

In earlier times, it was not allowed for a pagan to enter the cathedral, a bit of problem for someone who had not yet been baptized but was going to be. So, rather than adjust the rule, it was decided that cathedrals would all have separate buildings specifically to hold baptisms, then they could enter as proper Catholics. They went a little overboard in some cases.

The first glimpse of the Duomo is this utterly
awesome facade. It is made entirely of
three colours of marble, gold leaf and fresco paintings.

A look down the side of this immense building.

A closer look at the front and the bell tower

And for those of you wondering where the scaffolding
was, we finally found some! They are doing
some restoration work on one of the apses.

The Baptistry

The Baptistry entrance. The gold carving on the
door depicts stories of the Old Testament
as most of the people could not read or write

In the Palazzo Vecchio, or Old Palace, where the
lawmaking Signoria was literally cloistered
so they could not be negatively influenced

The loggia which is now a gallery. If you look outside the
Palazzo Vecchio on the left you will see a replica of
Michelangelo's David. The original is now in one of
the smaller palaces not too far away.

The Ponte Vecchio. Hard to get a good photo with
all the people and tour groups in the way.

One of the homes on the bridge

  

Santa Maria della Croce is much smaller than the Duomo, but also has an interesting history. It is also a monastery of the Franciscan order where the monks have historically produced some of the finest Italian leather. Now they run an apprenticeship program to continue to teach tanners and leather artisans the craft.

There is a Star of David up in the top of the facade
because the architect of the church was Jewish
and wanted to have his faith represented. As the
six pointed star is also part of the Catholic religion
it was incorporated.

Looking toward the Piazza

 

The town of Pisa has almost as long and involved a history as Florence does. It is, of course, famous for the Leaning Tower, which is really the bell tower for the town cathedral. The cathedral also boasts probably the largest baptistry in all of Italy, certainly larger than the one in Florence.

The story of the tower is basically one of poor engineering and maybe a bit of excessive architecture. When the modern engineers started working on preventing the tower from falling over, they discovered that it had been built on only a 3 metre deep foundation. Not much to hold up 14,700 tons of marble!! And on the not too solid alluvial plain of the Arno River. Apparently the tower had started to lean within a couple of years of the start of its construction, so as the bottom 3 levels were leaning one way, they built the next 3 levels with one side higher than the other to compensate, since they didn't know what was going on, and then the bell housing on the top was built straight. If you look closely, you can see all of that now. The addition of the walkway around the base in the 1830s actually caused the tower to lurch another 1/4 of a degree.

The tower was, in fact, continuing to lean by about 1 millimetre per year, and would ultimately hit the literal 'tipping point' if nothing was done to stop it. So in the 1990s the base of the tower was reinforced with concrete and steel cables to provide the counterweight from below and stabilize the building. This has already brought it back to the 1830 level, but it will never be straight. Something the citizens of Pisa are quite happy about. After all, if it was just the 'Tower of Pisa' would you want to go?

The gate to the cathedral square. It used to be
a Medici coat of arms at the top, but at some time
it was defaced by taking off the 6 balls
from the centre.

"Pinch Me!!"

It looks worse from the back side!

The Baptistry

Wow! That was quite a day, and, as mentioned at the top of the post, has placed Tuscany firmly at the top of our to-see-again list.

This has been a very busy two weeks, and has demonstrated that high-impact cruising isn't really our cup of tea. But it did show us a part of the world we hadn't seen before and introduced us to Mediterranean cuisine. And that's a lasting impression that we will build on.

Thanks for coming along on this journey. We'll be back in the Med in September aboard Crystal Esprit, focusing on the Greek islands and the Adriatic Sea.