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| The Arno River with the Ponte Vecchio in the background. |
Rome may be the Eternal City, but Florence has to be a close runner-up. This is a city whose length and breadth you can walk in a day if you desire. Where you’re rarely more than a couple blocks away from a coffee shop with great pastries, a restaurant with terrific pasta or a site that somehow Michelangelo touched during his lifetime.
In short, Florence is the perfect place for an autumn getaway. Not too big, not too small. Not too empty, not too crowded. Hotels as luxurious as you want or as simple and inexpensive as you want.
Last week was my fourth or fifth visit to Florence, but it was the first time I went entirely for fun. I had no specific agenda except to walk the city and see a few sites. Having shot an episode of my public television series in Florence, I presumed I’d seen most of the great sites. But I was wrong.
At the top on my list of finds this trip was Michelangelo’s architectural tour de force, the Laurentian Library attached to the church of Saint Lorenzo. A recent Wall Street Journal article called my attention to the library, which is often overlooked by visitors to the city.
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| The Michelangelo-designed Laurentian Library. |
The small, elaborately designed stairwell to the library was the first free-standing stairwell built in Europe, and its dimly lit foyer is in contrast to the long, light-filled reading room one enters to find rows and rows of wooden benches where visitors could read books. At the end of each row’s pew-like seats are the titles in Latin of the volumes that were once on offer there.
An adjacent room displays some of those early books on medicine, religion and horticulture. Precise lettering and gorgeous color illustrations make the books especially fascinating, and you can actually flip through the pages thanks to a computer screen.
Incredibly, during earlier visits I’d also missed the Basilica of Santa Croce, the main Franciscan church in Florence where, inside, you’ll find the elaborately carved tombs that memorialize Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, Machiavelli, and “the father of radio,” Gugliemo Marconi. It’s quite a lineup. It became clear to me it was time to return to Florence with a film crew and do another, updated episode.
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| Michelangelo's tomb at the Basilica of Santa Croce. |
If I’d had one more day, I’d have walked the gardens of Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti Palace, but I did get to see Michelangelo’s home, Casa Buonarroti, before he moved to Rome.
I stayed at an almost unmarked (except for a small nameplate by a door buzzer) B&B with only four or five rooms on the Piazza Santo Spirito where the church that gives the piazza its name has a wooden Crucifix carved by Michelangelo when he was just a teenager; he later ignored the work, considering it inferior, but that hasn’t stopped it from being a must-see stop.
My B&B, Vecchia Firenze, cost $95 and was clean and simple. Just downstairs and next door, a café, Ricchi, served freshly squeezed orange juice (ask for “spremuta di arancho”) and pastries each morning and luscious salads for lunch.
A wine bar called Volume put out heavy hors d' oeuvres each evening and offered free Wi-Fi. Immediately around the corner, Trattoria da Lupi and Trattoria La Casalinga served up well-priced, authentic meals. For a more special meal, nearby Trattoria 4 Leoni fit the bill. Don’t be shy about ordering the house wine at any restaurant; I was never disappointed.
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| The best damn hot chocolate in Italy, at Pasticerria Robiglio. |
It isn’t in the immediate neighborhood, but the 10-minute walk is worth it to sip the city’s best hot chocolate at Pasticerria Robiglio, 112 Via dei Servi, not far from the Piazza Santa Croce. You can thank me when you return from your trip.
Two small points: There are two sets of street numbers in downtown Florence, which can be confusing. The blue numbers are assigned to businesses, the red ones to residences. And don’t rent a car in Florence unless you’re heading out of town to visit Sienna or elsewhere in Tuscany or Umbria. Rental cars cannot drive in the old part of town where many sites are. Cameras capture the license plate numbers of all cars that enter; if you don’t have a resident’s permit, you’ll be fined 90 euros. You may drive in to drop off luggage at a hotel, but your hotel must then e-mail your license number to the police so you don’t receive a ticket for that incursion.
Photos by Rudy Maxa