Sunday, 27 September 2009 - Two Churches Palimpsest Redux

I wake up at three, change into jeans and hit the streets.  My goal is to hike up to San Miniato, have lunch, and then hike down again.  Simple enough.  However, on the way, I pass by Santa Croce and am lured in.

I can't go to Santa Croce without recalling "Room with a View".  This time however the fact that the entire south side of the nave is wrapped in plastic (including Machiavelli, and Dante, but not Michelangelo) I am quickly disabused of the film, and can enjoy it on its own merits.  As I visit the chapels and see Giotto after Giotto, I realize that this is a work which is constantly being rewritten.  Looking at the magnificent tomb of Gallileo (why didn't they honor him while he was alive?) I can see that it was layered on top of some magnificent frescoes that were simply interrupted.  Each age adds its own.  To the left of the high altar, two chapels away, is what looks to be a WWII monument, with interesting moderne bas reliefs and pieta, along with what appear to be venetian glass sconces on both sides.  There is modern stained glass, as well.  Very nice - almost refreshing.  Given the wonderful gothic church and its magnificent ceilings and sacristy, it is a bit of a shock to walk into the Pazzi chapel.

One gets the same effect at the new sacristy at San Lorenzo with the simple classicism and lines, and a minimum of decoration.  The della Robia rondels are also of a different type - slimmed down and more direct.  The room literally takes your breath away.  The portico is refreshing as well - such a change from the busy character of the main church.

It is here that I find monks buried with a cedar planted over them.  I am heartened to know that I wasn't dreaming that one up.  The Brunelleschi cloister is also a delight of simplicity.  In the museum of the Opera, they are once again displaying works that were damaged in the flood.  The Cimabue hangs with all of its scars - almost like badges of honor.  Other works are slowly returning as well.

I cross the Arno and walk along the south bank up to Porta San Niccolo where I begin a slow ascent up to Piazzale Michelangelo.  Each step of the way gives way to a more and more stunning panorama of the city below, marred only by the crane at the Uffizi, but it even melts away in the golden late-afternoon sun.  There is a lovely restaurant at the top - closed, so I go to a "bar" on the side of the road where getting waited upon seems like a work of Sisyphus.  Finally I get a panino con tonno e pomodoro, and a coke.  I figure that with all the walking I've done, and am just about to do, my system can dispose of the sugar.  They were delicious.

I ascend up the hill to San Salvatore al Monte, but don't go in, continuing on instead up the porta sacra and walk up to San Miniato.  If Santa Croce is all about Franciscan excess (that doesn't work, does it - but that's the fact), then San Miniato is all about Benedictine restraint and order.  The original buildings date from the 12th Century, but all has been extensively restored.  It is late in the afternoon and the light is quiet dim inside, but the splendor of the mosaic, and the frescoes is still perceptible.

The evening office is being sung by the monks in the lower chapel, so all is loveliness and beauty.  It does make one believe.

Now it's cross country.  The terrain is a series of valleys with gardens and olive groves at the floor and grand, but simple homes at the tops.  Viale Niccolo Machiavelli twists and turns as it descends from San Miniato down to Porta Romano at the bottom.  On the way I stop at a simple cenotaph memorializing foot soldiers from WWI.  It is surrounded by hundreds of cedars.  I had to pause for a moment.  About half way down I realize that I can follow a chain of parks that go directly down the hill slicing through Machiavelli's "S" like a "$".  The parks are lovely (and the sounds are eerily like Antonioni's sound track for "Blow Up").  There are quiet walks, lovely bonds, and smell of "grass" as I pass by a group of young men.  (...Hey!...)  Now I'm skirting the Boboli Gardens, as I make my way past the Palazzo Pitti and across the Ponte Vecchio. 

I go to the hotel - check email and then go out to dinner at Il Caminetto right to the south of the cathedral, where there is a caprese and a lombardini di vitello ai carciofi waiting for me.  It was remarkable.