Day 29: Final fling in Florence…

Our last day in Florence and after another sumptuous brekkie our target today was to get up close and personal with David at Gallerie de l’Academia. Again the Firenze card was a quick access to this small gallery with very high ground floor ceilings to house the fabulous Michelangelo work. David dominates the far end of the ground floor of the gallery, towering above the patrons commanding our attention. It is just amazing... and I was standing beneath it. Wow!

We spent a fair bit of time wandering the rest of the gallery, the upper floor dedicated to the development of religious iconography in Florence from the end of the 13^th century. It was puzzling as to why all these bits of religious art had found their way out of the local churches and into galleries such as Academia and Uffizi and this gallery held the secret. Apparently during the Napoleonic wars art had been removed from churches and had been stored in other places eventually finding its way to these galleries, and while seeing the artwork in churches is fabulous, the preservation and restoration that has occurred to the altar triptychs etc. is fabulous. On the way out we found a "spoof" sculture of David by a contemporary Florentine artist.  David in pink... what a hoot!!

Medici chapel was the next stop before needing to be back at the hotel for a 12.30 checkout. This is a smallish chapel built to house the tombs of the Medicis and the sacristy that is off the chapel was designed and built by Michelangelo. The chapel is undergoing some renovation and so the scaffolding was obscuring part of the chapel but the huge marble sarcophagi mounted half was up the wall made a large statement about the wealth and privilege of the family Medici. Off the chapel was a small anteroom housing about 15 reliquaries with bits of all sorts of saints including a relic of a companion of St Ursula! A little shopping on the way back to the hotel capped off a lovely morning. 

We packed and left our bags downstairs and set out for lunch and a visit to the local church Santa Maria Novella. Unfortunately the museum was housing a private function and was closed to us, but we made a visit to the Blessed Sacrament chapel and then crossed the piazza for lunch and yes you guessed it… gelato. Following lunch we went for a long walk via the Duomo to the Florence synagogue. En route we stopped to witness a huge police cavalcade flanking a couple of black limos. Not sure which famous Italians were going somewhere but they were certainly making a statement.

Arriving at the Synagogue we were faced with very strict security before arriving in the prayer hall. We were fortunate that one of the community members  had just started giving a talk on the synagogue and the history of the Firenze Jewish congregation especially their place in the Holocaust story. It appears as though the Catholic Cardinal of Florence and the chief Rabbi worked together to try to protect the Jewish community, secreting many of them in convents and monasteries. As a result the loses to the Firenze Jewish community were much lower than the overall Italian impact of approximately 25%+ Jewish mortality. The work in the synagogue is rich and amazing... built in the 1800’s and only slightly damaged during the Nazi retreat in 1944. The mechitzah is huge surrounding the synagogue on 3 sides and four rows deep. It is a beautiful prayerful place and I am glad that we visited. 

We caught the number 6 bus back into Florence and then got adventurous and decided on a tram ride to the outer suburb of Villa Costanza for a look before grabbing the bags and heading to the station to catch the fast train to Roma. It was a very fast ride.

The 'entertainment' on the train back to Rome was provided unwittingly by a brash midwest American couple who sat opposite us across the aisle. They had been ripped off by a local who demanded money to put their bags up in the luggage locker. During the entire trip to Rome they prattled on, the wife especially, constantly disturbing the Italian doctor who was sitting opposite them. They wanted advice on where to eat and were surprised because they had never heard of spaghetti Carbonara!. This woman was a crushing bore... and she disclosed that she was a psychologist... a family court therapist to be precise... one wonders how she could possibly have been quiet for long enough. So glad they weren't making the trip on the airport express tonight and so we moved to the end of the carriage and gathered our bags ready to leap off. Then we walked straight onto the Leonardo Express straight out to the airport and the Airport Hilton Hotel, our domicile for the final eve in Roma. A bit of a hike from the terminal, but by the time we got there, bed never looked so good.