San Gimignano: Gelato and Towers in the Tuscan Countryside
♥ San Gimignano is an old, walled Italian hill town in Tuscany surrounded by numerous vineyards and cypresses. ♣ ♣ Centuries ago, during a period of conflict and intense rivalry, San Gimignano’s prominent families tried to outdo each other by building houses of ever increasing height. Each new house was built to be taller than […]
Fiesole
♣ ♣ On the hills just above Florence lies the quiet comune of Fiesole. It is famous for its ruins, Roman and Etruscan; for Fra Angelico, who took his vows there as a friar of the Dominican Order; for Monte Ceceri, where Leonardo da Vinci conducted his flying experiments; and for unparalleled panoramic views of […]
The Last Medici
♥ ♥ The 18th of February marks the anniversary of the death of Anna Maria Luisa de Medici, the last of Florence’s ultra powerful Medici dynasty. She left the family’s entire art collection to Florence under the condition that none of it be ever taken out of the Tuscan capital and thus unwittingly ensured the city’s future through tourism. […]
Is A Selfie Automatically Shameless?
Do you look down on people who take selfies? (Go on, be honest.) Do you think that people who take selfies are necessarily vain or silly or classless or brassy? Are all selfies automatically shameless? Like this girl in the photo — how do you feel about her? Would you feel the same way about her if another person was […]
Art at the Uffizi
♥ ♥ I’ll be happily plebeian till the day I die but I learned to appreciate art (and museums) more once I realized it was okay to approach them with less than total reverence. Before, there were paintings or sculptures that I just couldn’t bring myself to admire because, to be honest, they were downright […]
The Architectural Wonder That Started as a Group Project Gone Wrong
As group projects do. ♥ ♥ As you probably know, the dome of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore — perhaps the most famous landmark in Florence — was built in the early 1400’s by Filippo Brunelleschi. What you may not know is that, apparently, there was an architectural design contest for the dome […]