Florence End of Season Blues

It’s the end of the season for music but the beginning of the season for tourism and festivals for tourists. So what am I to do now?

Just by the Baptistry I find a small stall supervised by a girl who has just returned from Southampton where she studied English. (Do they speak English in Southampton?) We agree that the New forest is nice and the little towns in the area are cute. But I want to know what she’s advertising.

She is advertising ‘Free Tours of Florence’ financed by the city itself! How can I resist this? I promise to return in the afternoon.

I am a little sceptical of such tours. I sometimes see the tours around the Central Market run by one of the hostels in Florence. I saw one chap telling spellbound listeners that truffles are often found by pigs. “But these are found by dogs” he says to the obvious relief of his listeners. Then another time I stood by a fresh pasta place (You can see them making the pasta from scratch) while a very earnest lady gave a lecture on pasta at breakneck speed pointing to the different types of product on sale. The problem was that she was pointing and describing some things that were not actually there. For these ‘virtual’ products, I would have thought it better to refer to a virtual source of information.

That afternoon I approach my free tour with a little trepidation. “You can peel off at any time if you want to”, says my Southampton friend. This tour is supposed to be round the Oltrarno(‘Beyond the Arno’) but we begin with a very thorough lecture on the Baptistry doors which I adore. The guide is a very earnest lady who sounds like an Art historian to me. We move south towards the Ponte Vecchio but stop in the Piazza Republica, my local hangout, to learn that this is the site of the original Roman settlement of Florence. That explains all those visions of centurions handing out traffic violation tickets that I have been having recently.

We have similar descriptions of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi. Do you ever have problems that you have so much ‘stuff’ that you actually move house? Well, it seems that the Medici family had the same problem. But they built a larger place to house some offices and to store their ‘stuff’ and it’s still here today complete with their ‘stuff’. Uffizi simply means offices so aren’t we glad they didn’t name this place the ‘Stuff’!!!

One of the Medici’s problems was how to get to the other places south of the Arno without encountering real people. So Vasari built an amazing corridor through which they could walk (or be carried of course!!) all the way to the Palazzo Pitti and their Boboli Gardens. The route ran on top of the Ponte Vecchio and, on the way, they could look in at one of their churches by way of a private gallery connected to the corridor.

In photographs you can see the Vasari corridor running across the Arno on top of the Ponte Vecchio. Remember that Vasari built this 1000m (Yes one kilometre!!!) long corridor in just five months about 450 years ago!!! Could your builder do that? At first the corridor runs from the Uffizi to the Ponte Vecchio. On the way the corridor allows access to the Medici seats in their church of St Felicity so that the family could attend mass in their own church without being seen.

At last I could find the answer to my question about how on earth I could get into the Vasari Corridor. The guide was a little hesitant to answer but a friendly Italian who had attached himself to the group did answer my question. “It takes years for Florentines to get a ticket!” I say jokingly, “Hitler got in. Why can’t I?” He smiles but we chat along the way.

This guide is good – VERY good. She takes us into the church of St Felicity and shows us where the Medicis would pop in from their corridor to hear mass whilst being screened from the people below. We also get into a beautifully frescoed area, not normally accessible to the public. My Italian friend is amazed. “I’ve never been in here!”.

Frustratingly, we have followed the Vasari corridor all the way from the Uffizi across the top of the Ponte Vecchio (Is that why the Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge not destroyed by Hitler’s army as it left Florence in 1944? Hitler remembered his visit to the Vasari corridor?) to the church of St Felicita. Walking further up the hill, we finally reach its conclusion in the Palazzo Pitti where our guide gives a thorough description of the materials and the construction of early buildings in Florence.

But we are not finished yet. We swing into a narrow lane and reach the amazing church of Santo Spirito; amazing for the fact that the original design by Brunelleschi is based on mathematical principles and the ideals of Vitruvius’s ‘De Architectura’. Unfortunetely, Caccini plonked a huge pile of altar in the crossings about 400 years ago which spoiled the whole effect. Also a lot of Brunelleschi’s side designs were not finished. Our guide seemed particularly fascinated by this church.

We walk into the Segrestia to find, much to my amazement, a wooden statue of Jesus, as a naked young teenager being crucified. It was carved by the young Michelangelo. I’ve tried to find details about this piece but have failed to find much. There’s no security in the area which is where the priests robe and disrobe.

As we leave the church, I see a notice advertising a concert of music by Frescobaldi at six o’clock. As it was already five o’clock (Oh Yes!!! You get your money’s worth on these tours!) I stayed with the group for one more church just on the north side of the Arno; once more an excellent account of the history surrounding the church of the Trinity, it’s design and Art.

Then and I left to hear some Frescobaldi.

The concert was to be held in the Casa Santo Nome di Gesu in the Piazza del Carmine. I found the Piazza but had no idea where the actual room was. By mistake I walked into the church of Santa Maria del Carmine and … Wow!!!! Another magnificent church!!! I could hear benediction being intoned but I couldn’t stay. Eventually I found a door which I could open in the square and there was a welcome smile in the atrium beyond. “Upstairs!!!” said the owner of the smile.

Upstairs was yet another beautiful room with a wonderful painted ceiling. I’ve been in so many lovely places in Florence and here was another! There was an audience of about twenty. This was fine as the room was fairly small.

Well I never!!! On to the stage trooped a collection of English singers who had been working on five part and five part antiphonal works for the past week. “Have you been around Florence?”, I asked one of them later. “Oh No! We’ve been working on this stuff! We’ll have a day off tomorrow! Then we’re flying home”. On the leaflet I had picked up was written, “Coro Internazionale – Singing in Florence”.

They sang through a marvellous programme of music which wasn’t all Frescobaldi; in fact some scholars would think that none of it was. But it’s always a treat to hear music like this. Composers such as Corteccia and Malvezzi are so rarely sung and their music is lovely. I didn’t care that the performance was pedestrian (Hey! What do you expect in a few days?) and the really friendly conductor looked as though he was preparing for the ski season. Everybody, including me, had a good time, enjoyed the music and the performance. That’s what music is all about!!!