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My last visit to Florence had been a
guided tour in February 2022 and was just post-Covid, so involved
rigmarole like tests, forms and masks. My last trip with Jane was 2018,
and she hasn't flown anywhere since Covid. And this was also a trip for
her birthday. So something of a celebration was in the air.
Wednesday 8th
A quick and trouble-free train
journey to Gatwick was followed by a quick passing through of check-in and
security, despite the Vueling self-check-in machines not recognising us. And
the flight had empty seats, including one next to us, and was nearly hall
an hour early. The tram ticket machine posed no problems and we were soon
at our hotel door. We had been warned that the hotel was unstaffed after
7.30 and had been prepared with a code to get us through the huge wooden
door from the street, through the iron gates and, after going up in the
lift, to get us through the landing door. As promised our keys were in a
welcoming envelope on the desk and we were soon in our quirky rooms. Our
hunger precluded unpacking yet, so we headed off to old fave the Grotta di
Leo, which was heaving, with a huge group, but still provided reviving
pizzas and beers. The first gelato, for me, from the place in Piazza SM
Novella, was cinnamon and coconut.
Thursday 9th
The Hotel Splendid breakfast is fine
with regard to pastries, cereals and coffee, but not so good where the
orange juice is concerned. Same as it ever was, as the Talking Heads song
goes, although the foyer of the hotel has a pegboard with Road to
Nowhere's lyrics spelled out on it.
An unrushed mooch over the Ponte Vecchio, through the
Piazza della Signoria and up to the Duomo got us to the Palazzo Strozzi in time for
our 10.30 booking for the Fra Angelico exhibition. The queue was bypassed, we learned
how to use the new glass-fronted lockers' combination locks, and then we
were in. And boy was it a fine show! The hanging, lighting, spacing,
captions and selection of works for context were all spot-on. Many works
had had their panels reunited for the first time in ages, and many had
been cleaned up for the exhibition, including a fave Lorenzo Monaco
Annunciation from Santa Trinita. The coup of the exhibition was
bringing together 17 of the 18 remaining panels of the San Marco
Altarpiece (see right). The exhibition passed in a
good-length blur of pleasure.
To old fave Mama's Bakery for a cream-cheese bagel lunch and for an apple muffin to
take back for afternoon tea, our hotel being cunningly close by.
The post-siesta stroll took us west to San Frediano and then over the Arno
for a visit to the church of Ognissanti, always an eclectic treat. A loop to take in the
Rucellai palace facade, always a treat in the evening, and we returned to
the Grotta di Leo. Not heaving tonight, thankfully, and I remembered how
much I like the Pappa di Pomodoro, and lo, it was far from a false memory. The
gnocchi al pesto was to follw.
Friday 10th
Striking while the Fra Angelico
iron was hot we decided to visit the exhibition's other centre this
morning, at San Marco. Here are the usual joys of the cells, the cloister
Crucifixion and the Chapter House, plus the Fra Angelico room, having lost
some goodies to the Strozzi exhibition, has filled the gaps with a lot
of loans, amounting to an exhibition of early works. Also the library has an
impressive display of Fra Angelico's book illumination, and such like.
There is a new bookshop just before the exit, so the Cenacolo with the fab
Ghirlandaio Last Supper is no longer full of loitering and
shopping. Another good
morning.
We made for Ruth's, by the synagogue, for a fine falafel lunch, and I got a gelato from Neri
on the way back - ricotta and fig with mandarin.
Our evening escapade was a walk west to find a church called San
Bartolomeo, up Monte Oliveto, so named because the church's monastery here was
founded by a monk from Monte Oliveto Maggiore. The church once housed the
famous and fine Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci, his earliest existing
painting. San Bartolomeo was closed but didn't look abandoned, indeed a road
sign said it was UNESCO certified, for what that's worth. The hospital adjoining, however, is a
wreck undergoing rebuilding (see right).
For our evening meal we found the Florence branch of Piadineria for the
wrap I had many times in Milan.
Saturday 11th
Today Jane made for the Specola
museum and I headed off to find Santa Maria a Ricorboli, another
recently-discovered church, this time just outside the walls to the east. But
first I popped into Santo Spirito, always a treat, and their continuing
ban on photography made for a more calm and spiritual wander. My walk took
me past the famously always-closed church of San Niccolò
and...it was open! After my decades of
complaining. A similarly long-suffering fellow complainer had
found it open last January, after having lived in Florence for 12 years
and never having done so, so my surprise was less heart-attack inducing, but
still. Many notes and photos were taken before I moved east and found Santa Maria a Ricorboli. It's a clean and functioning church, and has a
Virgin and Child which the
church says is by Giotto himself (see right).
I'd spotted a panino place opposite San Niccolò, and their mozzarella and
tomato with pesto tempted my back. I ate it in a slightly scruffy little
park just by the town wall and it was good and freshly made. A gelateria
nearby provided a stracciatella and lemon cono and a little almond
crescent cake was spotted in a pasticceria just by the Ponte Vecchio, for
afternoon tea.
Our evening walk took us up to the Alessi food shop near the Duomo where I got some
pear and honey chocolate, spicy rooibos tea bags, plus a jar of chinotto
marmallata. They didn't have any Mostarda
Toscana, though, which was disappointing as I'd expected to get it here,
Florence being in Tuscany. Back to
the Leo for pappa di pomadoro and a cipolla pizza.
Sunday 12th
To the Innocenti Ospedale museum this  morning
as their already superior art gallery recently added some rooms of
frescos, which are well worth a visit, with some impressive examples to
get real up close to. They have a couple of sweet courtyards too, and
displays explaining the history and
function of the place.
For lunch we returned to Mama's for bagels, and a slice of apple sponge topped with
berry compote and almonds to take back for hotel tea. I blagged a fork and
plate from reception to complete the experience.
Monday 13th
Doing our own things today, I headed
off to Santa Croce. No queue at the ticket office, where there was a small
PC-printed poster telling us that the Bardi chapel was in restauro, which
I knew. What wasn't mentioned was the nave being half fenced off with a
very long crane doing stuff to the top of the wall under the ceiling. Also the door
to the small courtyard and Famedio was closed, as was the corridor that
used to begin the Museum, before reaching the refectory. The refectory
building itself is covered in scaffolding and the entrance to the cloister
where the Romantic monuments are kept is now the entrance to a toilet. But
apart from all that...
Over the Arno for a repeat of my Saturday panino lunch, in the same park,
but this time with a bag of 1936 crisps. Having entertained doubts that my
old legs could still manage the punishingly steep slope up to San Miniato
I realised that I was looking up at the road to Piazzale Michelangelo and
if cars could manage it so could I, and I did. When I got up there I found
that the steep way up was now fenced off at the top. Reaching San Miniato
I found it all covered in scaffolding for work due to finish August this
year. I thought I knew the Porte Sante cemetery around San Miniato, but
the bits down steps in front of the church and just through the gate to
the left of the church are not the half of it. Carrying on past the
campanile you reach a feast of chapels, mausolea, monuments and a huge
three level pyramid of tombs. I couldn't have been more surprised and, I
confess, thrilled, and a bit overwhelmed. I spent a good while there but I
did not feel I did it justice.
Our evening meal, after some discussion, confusion and finding one chosen place
closed, ended up at a table outside Ristorante Ricchi in Piazza Santo Spirito. The
atmosphere was buzzy, but the pizza was not special and a question about a
starter was answered by the waiter with guess-work masquerading as fact. On the way back I had
a vanilla and pear cono from Sbrino - Gelatificio Contadino where
we'd seen queues. It was not special.
Tuesday 14th
As a wise man once said - if it's
your last day in Florence and you've not been to Santa Maria Novella yet,
you know where you gotta go. On the way I tried, for the umpteenth time,
to get some Marvis cinnamon toothpaste, this time from a pharmacy I've
used in previous decades. I was told they don't stock Marvis at all now as
it's made in China.
The entrance to SMNov at the moment is through the door
to the left hand aisle. Which gives you soon the view of the Massacio
Trinity covered in scaffolding. But a sinking heart becomes a leaping
one when you see that you can pay a man €1.50 to climb up into the
scaffold (see right). Verily a treat. No scaffolding probs through the rest of the visit, just the same old best frescoed east
end anywhere (see below right), the Spanish Chapel, the cloisters...all the usual joys.
There is a new gift shop and cafe in the modern bit before you exit out
the back way. But there's still the old shop in the Sacristy, selling
different stuff.
To Mama's for our final cream cheese bagels, with an apple and cinnamon
muffin to go.
In the evening we made for Santi Apostoli as I'd read of a newly returned
altarpiece, finally back from restoration following the 1966 flood! And there it
was, in the fourth chapel on the left. As we left I pointed out to Jane that the
fine old-fashioned shop that
sold everything you could classify as household - hardware, cleaning
products, coffee machines, cups and cutlery... - was still there. And what
was in the window? Marvis toothpaste! And they had just today had a
delivery which included the small cinnamon tubes I'd been failing to find
since my Milan trip in March.
Our last meal at the Grotta di Leo was, for me, my last pappa di pomadoro
and spaghetti in a mouth-tingling and eye-watering tomato sauce, with
garlic and pepper.
Wednesday 15th
Our flight at 12.35 meant leaving the Splendid for the SMN tram stop
around 9.30. Our timing was perfect. BA/Vuelling did less well – the woman
gossiping on the check-in desk with her mate forgot to give us our
boarding passes. I politely reminded her. And our flight left after 2.00,
an hour and a half late.
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ded this
book when it came out in 2022. Since then it's become the book most
mentioned by people who I meet on trips, and the like, when we start talking
about novels set in Florence. So, a book crying out to be re-read whilst
visiting the glorious city at its heart. It's a book about love in all its
guises and permutations and degrees. It's full of good bits and impossible
not to get seduced by, with its believable characters mostly cursed with good
luck. There's lots of art, food, skies and landscape too. It's just such a
Florentine experience, full of joy, as I say, but bookended by the
War and the Flood of 1966. both feelingly evoked. If you're not in
Florence when you read this book you soon will be.
Cristina Acidini & Elena
Gurrieri 