Rome 2013: Day 14 & 15 Firenze

Day 14 & 15

Firenze

Oct 7 & 8

As hard is was to leave Rome, we took two days to speed walk through Florence.

The Roma Termini Station

The current building was designed by the two teams which won a competition in 1947: Leo Calini and Eugenio Montuori; Massimo Castellazzi, Vasco Fadigati, Achille Pintonello and Annibale Vitellozzi. It was inaugurated in 1950. The building is characterized by the extremely long, modernist façade in travertine and by the gravity-defying double curve of the cantilever roof in reinforced concrete. Because of these, it carries the nickname the Dinosaur. The famous anodized aluminium friezes are work of artist Amerigo Tot: the composition is about capturing the dynamics in sound and speed of a train.

Nice Industrial buildings coming out of Rome.......

..........and into the Firenze Station in 1 hour and 50 minutes!

Firenze Santa Maria Novella has amongst the most architecturally significant recent buildings of any Italian railway station.
Firenze’s earliest railway station was the “Leopolda”, built in 1844 and designed by Robert Stephenson, the son of the man who invented railways. It was one of Italy’s very first railway stations, and was located outside the city’s walls. Four years later a second station, the “Maria Antonia”, was built inside the city walls, which was an important innovation for the railway concept prevailing in those days. “Maria Antonia” station was demolished to make way for the present station facing the church of Santa Maria Novella: a masterpiece of rationalist architecture, one of the finest expressions of the modern movement in Italian architecture.
Once agreement had been reached between the City Council and the State Railways that Firenze’s main railway station should continue to be located inside the city walls, in 1932 a national competition was launched for the design of the new Travellers Building. It was won by the Tuscan Group of architects headed by Giovanni Michelucci and including Baroni, Berardi, Gamberini, Guarnieri and Lusanna. The station was opened in 1935: its chief features are the spacious entrance hall with its glass and steel roof structure and the main gallery, whose functional layout heralds the one later built in Roma. Its outer facings and finishings reflect the materials and colours of the city.

Into one of the worlds most beautiful cities - across the Arno w a view of the Ponte Vecchio

A city built on craft and commerce still focuses on both

Missoni!

Missoni uses its designs in fabric, in tiles and in its gate

the great original market

is still a market with its famous boar - rub its' nose for good luck

Then to the Uffizi - Vasari's best building

The Palazzo Vecchio - inspiration for Eutaw Street and Camden Yards looking towards Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer tower

I love this little entry to this shop, creating a kind of porch off of the street before you enter

A fantastic lunch

where dogs are welcomed

I had the Malfata di rocatta e spinachi al buro e salvi - pretty unbelieveable

The kitchen seen from the restaurant

different paving than in Roma - more refined?

The grotto at the Pitti Palace on the way into the Bobili Gardens

The Ponte Vecchio - lots of tourists even in the rain

Into the Uffizi Galleries

Botticelli's masterpieces Primavera (c. 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) were both seen by Vasari at the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello in the mid-16th century, and until recently, it was assumed that both works were painted specifically for the villa. Recent scholarship suggests otherwise: the Primavera was painted for Lorenzo's townhouse in Florence, and The Birth of Venus was commissioned by someone else for a different site.

But this is my favorite.

Santa Croce - my old hang out and a place I analyzed for SU architecture in Florence in 1975.The Basilica is the largest Franciscan church in the world. Its most notable features are its sixteen chapels, many of them decorated with frescoes by Giotto.
The bell tower was built in 1842, replacing an earlier one damaged by lightning. The neo-Gothic marble façade, by Nicolò Matas, dates from 1857-1863.
A Jewish architect Niccolo Matas from Ancona, designed the church's 19th century neo-Gothic facade, working a prominent Star of David into the composition. Matas had wanted to be buried with his peers but because he was Jewish, he was buried under the porch and not within the walls.

with its Giotto frescos

and many tombs

and wonderful things in the floor

Like these flying pears for Perry!!

and angels......but why are all the angels and cupids always male?

The tree of life

Adjacent to Santa Croce is one of my favorite all time buildings - The Primo Chiostro, or Pazzi Chapel, built as the chapter house for Santa Croce, completed in the 1470s. Filippo Brunelleschi (who had designed and executed the dome of the Duomo) was involved in its design which has remained rigorously simple and unadorned.