Florence

Ponte Vecchio looks like a structure that you’ll only find in a fantasy novel or in a video game.

Ponte Vecchio

That feeling of being at an imaginary place persists even when you are walking through the arched corridors near the bridge.

An arched corridor near Ponte Vecchio

But when you are finally walking on the bridge, it feels like you are passing through a busy bazaar in India. Except that people with striking resemblance to Einstein might make an appearance.

Einstein?

I had carried along my new-found obsession for shuttered windows and old façades from Rome. Worse, I wasn’t content merely clicking them and tried to draw them in my pocket diary while waiting for lunch (with disastrous results). I guess when you are in the town where Michelangelo grew up, photography feels a bit passive - even a betrayal of sorts.

Shuttered windows

The corridor that led us to Palazzo della Signoria (where a replica of Michelangelo’s David awaited us), was lined with easels and painters practicing their craft. Some had left their tools and gone away. We saw some confused artists running around and wondered if they were dodging harassment by local police.

A corridor close to Palazzo Vecchio

We knew we were seeing a replica of David but that didn’t make it any less awe-inspiring. For reasons that I have forgotten by now, I couldn’t get myself to photograph it and was perfectly content clicking random things around it. I do remember being very happy.

Below this stands a replica of David

Loggia dei Lanzi

We spent the remaining day walking and enjoying random surprises that the streets of Florence kept springing at us.

A basin and two streets

Wall of a local church

My second bicycle is a pig

A random building in florence

By now the cathedrals were giving us déjà vu. On seeing one, the wife asked if we had seen it before and I said, “well, we must’ve, but in Rome”.

Random church in Florence

I was reading Huxley’s Devils of Loudon during our visit to Rome and Florence, and I couldn’t help but think of Urbain Grandier on seeing this door engraving.

Door engraving

Something about Ponte Vecchio drew us towards it again. It was the perfect note to the end our visit to Florence on.

Near Ponte Vecchio

Date

January 19, 2012

Up next

A personal history of listening to music — the old radio My memory is fading. This has to be written down. 30 years is not an awfully long time, but nothing has changed more than the way we buy and listen

Previously

Florence Cathedral At 90€ for a round-trip per person, the train ride from Rome to Florence doesn’t come cheap. But the lure of seeing Michelangelo’s David won and on