From the margins

When you look at beautiful and famous sights in cities that attract tens of millions of tourists a year, you know that you will not forget the major sights. In Florence the cathedral and its dome, the covered bridge over the Arno, the Uffizi, Piazza della Signoria, you’ll find thousands of reminders of these sight, all taken very professionally. What I will forget unless I take a photo is what I treasure and like to share. The little door high above my head, flanked by Renaissance cherubs, that was from the convent of Sant’apollonia. I still like it.

I had a photo of this beautiful detail. None of the photos around it gave me a clue where in Firenze I’d taken it. I flipped past it a couple of times before the colours sank through my thick skull. This was a detail from the facade of the cathedral of course. I’d been misled by the arc of blue in one corner. That was just the colour of the sky in the two weeks I spent that year in the city.

I’d forgotten all about this little painting wedged into a bit of the roof between vaultings, again at the convent of Sant’apollonia. I’d meant to look up its provenance and forgotten. The frescoes in this convent are from the 14th century CE, so this ship is modelled after those from that time. It seems to be a single masted ship 10-15 meters long. Many medieval European ships would have been shaped like this. I think the curvature of the roof makes the ship look more curved in this photo than the model would have been.

You can’t really miss seeing the dome of the cathedral from most elevated places around the city. This view through a window reminded me of our first visit to Firenze years before I took this photo. The Family and I had found a room overlooking Piazza di Santa Croce, and had a view of the dome outside our window every morning and night. The only downside was the tiny lift which could either take us or our suitcases. When we left we put our suitcases into the lift and ran downstairs to retrieve them.