blög!: firenze

5 - 9. october
(click to enlarge)

Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore - construction begun at end of 13th century.
the fascade on the outside as impressive as the interior is disappointing.
the square building in the foreground is Orsanmichele.

Palazzo Vecchio - city hall for a couple centuries
its not crooked in real life

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio - the bridge is lined with jewelers...
(its not crooked in real life)

...and has nightly performers singing everything from beatles to italian love songs

Duomo from the Campanilie

Duomo

the large square building is San Lorenzo and the dome behind it is Cappelle Medicee where pretty much all the important Medici's are buried. the Cappelle is unreal inside. its covered in 40 different types of marble and was almost as impressive as the Duomo is from the outside. i liked it best of the things i saw in florence.

San Lorenzo at night. its as old as it looks. the first church was built there in 393.

me and the Campanile. the Campanile is a free standing structure next to the Duomo and is nearly as tall as the Duomo.

via dei Ninna. the building on the left is the Palazzo Vecchio and on the right is the Galleria degli Uffizi

Galleria degli Uffizi - all sorts of people in this gallery: Tizian, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raffael, Rembrant, etc. etc. True to the stereotype its horribly organized. there were no descriptions and nothing at all written next to the pictures that was not italian. undoubtedly the worst audio tour. you had to walk into the right room and them press play and the guide would discuss chosen paintins. on some occasion the paintings had been moved leaving you to your imagination and in other cases whole rooms were closed but still on the tour.

via San Gallo - from my room in the hostel

from Piazzale Michelangelo. this picture is obligatory. most of what you see is air pollution, but the rest is as follows: on the left Palazzo Vecchio, center the Duomo, and on the right Santa Croce.

inside of Santa Croce. Michelangelo, Rossini, Marconi, Enrico Fermi, and Galileo (!) are buried here as well as monuments to Dante and Machiavelli (machiavelli, gotta love the italians, delusions of grandeur..)

picture of Galileo's grave. if you click on the picture you can just make out is name

inside the Palazzo Vecchio

mopeds as far as the eye can see

inside the Palazzo Strozzi there was an exhibit about the Nodel Prize and all the people who had recieved it. was cool, i got to listen to MLK's acceptance speech and glenn seaborg's (Seaborgium, #106). all the nobel prize winners were portrayed on a posters and the posters were run around the room on one of those thingys that they use at the dry cleaners to hang all the shirts.