Florence (Firenze) Day ONE

By Richelle Mehlhaff

We arrived at the train station early, only to see our train get delayed by 1 hour! After a long wait and a 2 hour journey, we finally arrived in Florence, exhausted, and dragged our bags to the hotel.

Our hotel was located in a street used for the leather market of Florence, where venders sell leather purses, belts, and journals (etc.) in all shapes and colors.

The leather stands in front of our hotel!

After a lunch break we visited the Duomo of Florence, which has an incredible dome built by Brunelleschi and a separate octagonal Baptistry that display a copy of the bronze doors by Ghiberti.

DUOMO: The dome, cathedral, and Batistry of Florence

The interior of the baptistery was covered in gold mosaics, with a famous Last Judgement scene of the the damned which inspired Dante’s depiction of the devil in The Divine Comedy.

Last Judgment from the interior of the Baptisty. The damned are on the right hand side.

From the Baptistry we walked to the Santa Croce church, patroned by Pazzi family (rivals to the Medici family). The church was beautiful, and has several famous funerary monuments. The tomb of Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Ghiberti, Machievelli, and an empty tomb for Dante, whose body is actually buried in Ravenna since his family was exiled from Florence when he was a boy.

Interior of the Santa Croce

We had a group dinner on Tuesday night, which was delicious! At the Trattoria ZaZa, a really fun, but cramped restaurant that had specialties like wild boar. YUM!

CIAO!