Road Trip Through History: In Search of Roman Florence
When you're in the heart of Florence, it's hard to remember that anything happened there other than the Renaissance. You can find the Etruscans in the nearby village of Fiesole. Sienna is essentially a medieval town. But Florence seems to be all Renaissance, all the time.
In fact, the city of Florentia was founded by the best known Roman of them all, Julius Caesar, in 59 BCE as a settlement for veterans of the Roman army. It came to be an important stop on the trade route to the sea and a center of the Roman textile industry. This stuff is not included in the guide books.
My Own True Love was determined to see something of Roman Florence and I was certainly willing. After all, the Roman baths turned out to be one of my favorite things in Bath, England—a city which is as closely aligned with the Georgian period as Florence is with the Renaissance. Besides, at some level the Rnaissance was all about reconnecting with the classical past, right?
For the most part, the Roman past is a ghost in Florence. Built on the plan of a Roman military camp, the grid of the central streets, remains, though I will admit that is is not readily visible to someone who lives in Chicago, where the grid is absolutely clear.* The two major streets from the Roman era, the Via Roma and the Via Coros still cross where the city’s forum once stood. The Via Proconsul, which takes its name from the title of a Roman official, follows the line of the now invisible Roman city wall.
It took some digging to find something concrete to look at.** The Palazzo Vecchio is in some ways a microcosm of Florentine history: Renaissance rooms in a medieval fortress built over a Roman theater. The Palazzo itself is stunning, but we were on a quest. We started with the Roman theater. While I have my issues with audio tours, in this case I strongly suggest that you download the tour app at the top of the stairs before you enter the excavations. We went through the excavations without it the first time and were frustrated by the general lack of signs and our own ignorance. We went back upstairs, My Own True Love (who is less easily discouraged than I am) loaded the app on his phone, and went through the excavation again. This time we understood what we were looking at and came away with a sense of the structure of the theater, its role in the Roman city, and a renewed appreciation for Roman engineering. ***
We later learned that you can see the ruins of an early Roman Christian church and an even older Roman home under the Duomo. If we'd just gone down the stairs to the gift shop, we'd have been right there. Maybe next time.
*Except where it isn’t. Angled streets, rail yards and the river add elements of confusion.
**Literally and figuratively. Concrete was one of Rome’s major contributions to world architecture, along with the arch and the vault.
Moscow Nights
In 1958 the Cold War was at its height--or perhaps its depths. Think Sputnik, Krushchev's overthrow of Stalin, backyard bomb shelters, and bomb drills in schools.* Not to mention Elvis Presley's induction into the army--a Cold War weapon of a different kind.
Culture was as much of a battlefield as space. In April, Soviet Russia hosted the first Tchaikovsky Competition: an international music competition designed to demonstrate Russia's cultural preeminence to the West. The competition was rigged. The Soviets had identified the Russian winners of the violin and piano competitions before the foreign contestants arrived. To everyone's amazement, a twenty-three year old pianist from Texas named Van Cliburn won over Russian audiences and Soviet judges with a lush playing style and a love of classical Russian music that rivaled their own. Popular pressure from Russian audiences in favor of Van Cliburn forced the Soviet judges—with Nikita Khrushchev's blessing—to award first prize to the Texas prodigy.
In Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War, historian Nigel Cliff brings to life Van Cliburn's unexpected triumph and its continuing implications for Soviet-American relations through the end of the Cold War.** Cliff sets the story of the competition firmly in its historical context of political paranoia on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and both Russian and American use of culture as a diplomatic weapon. At the same time, he never loses sight of the musician and the music at its heart: Cliff's Van Cliburn is eccentric, driven, politically innocent, big-hearted, and and wholly charming.
Moscow Nights is an engaging account of an extraordinary historical moment, best read with Van Cliburn's recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 playing in the background.
*By the time I reached grade school, we were carrying our chairs to the all purpose room to watch rocket launches and enduring occasional tornado drills based on the same principles as bomb drills. Good times.
**A scene in the Reagan White House brought me close to tears.
The guts of this review first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Road Trip Through History: Climbing Brunelleschi’s Dome
One of the first things My Own True Love and I did in Florence was visit Brunelleschi’s dome.* I suspect we are not alone in making that choice.
The first thing you need to know about visiting the Duomo is that it is part of a complex of impressive buildings, made up of the cathedral, of which the dome is a part, the baptistry,** a bell tower designed by Giotto, and a museum on the site of the original works of the cathedral (think construction office and artist workshops.) Depending on what you decide to do, you could spend the better part of two days on the complex—there’s a reason the ticket is good for two days. We decided to climb into the dome, tour the museum, and see the dome from inside the cathedral. Here are the highlights:
- If you know me in real life, you know that climbing up into the dome is a Big Deal. I have a bum knee and a bum lung and don’t much like heights. I have refused to climb many many staircases over the years, including fire towers, lookout points,and the Washington Monument. My Own True Love asked several times to be sure I understood what line we were in and what we were planning to do. The hour and a half wait** and the 463 steps were worth it. The stairs are narrow, some of them are spiraled, and the last bit was more like a ladder than a staircase. But it was very cool to see the structure between the inner and outer dome and breathtaking to see Giorgio Vasari’s frescoes of the Last Judgment up close.
- The cathedral interior is awe inspiring, even though we didn’t get a good view of the dome from below. (The central aisle was blocked off. ) The simplicity of the space surprised us. We had Gothic cathedrals and Baroque churches in our heads.
- The museum was a mixed bag. In my nerdy way, I had expected a museum named after the works of the Duomo to have exhibits on 14th and 15th century construction techniques. The entrance to the museum reinforced that impression: a long marble wall with the names of some of the thousands of men who worked on the Duomo over the years, masons and carpenters as well as architects and painters. Once inside, the focus shifted from “humble tradesmen”**** to architects and from construction to design. Much of the exhibition was illuminating. But by the end, I was too brain dead to appreciate the artistry behind embroidered Renaissance vestments and silver and gold altar pieces. I’m not sure I would ever have cared about 19th century arguments over restoring the facade to its original Gothic style. On the other hand, seeing Ghiberti’s original bronze doors to the baptistry was thrilling.
- I got a giggle over the fact that Donatello’s sculpture of the Prophet Habakkuk—considered one of the most important sculptures of the period— is popularly known as Zuccone (Pumpkin Head). Evidently the impulse that led Chicago’s citizens to call Anish Kapoor’s beautiful sculpture The Bean (instead of its official title Cloud Gate )is not new.
Stay tuned for more Florentine adventures/musings.
*Several weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that I planned to re-read Ross King’s book about the dome on our trip to Florence in anticipation of seeing the Duomo in real life. The book traveled with me to Florence, but I haven’t opened it. Instead I’ve been reading Sarah Gristwold’s newest book about sixteenth century European queens, coming soon to a blog post near you.
**One of the oldest buildings in Florence and predating the Duomo by hundreds of years/
***There are ways to skip the line, none of which worked for us. The steps are not avoidable. Think twice is you have heart trouble, claustrophobia or other ailments.
****Their phrase, not mine.
_________________________________________________
Traveler's tip for those of you with Florence in your future:
You can get a respectable meal on the piazza del Duomo. You can get an extraordinary meal at a better price if you're willing to walk a few blocks off the tourist path. We had a wonderful meal at Todo Modo : a combination restaurant, bookstore, and theater. The food is rooted in Tuscan tradition. The menu changes daily, based on what's on the market. And the bookstore has a small section of English language books about Italy. Good food, good wine, books. Can you ask for more?