Postcards from the Ledge: On the Road in Italy (part 3)

After a week in the Dolomites, where the nights were chilly and the days ranged from sunny-but-cool to rain, going back to full summer climes was an adjustment. This was readily apparent when we descended out of the mountains onto the flatlands near Verona and stopped for lunch in an autostrada rest area. Finding a picnic table in the shade was slim pickings.

We were now a smidgen past halfway through the trip. Our Italian was becoming more adept (barely). We had the automated tollbooths wired (barely). Terry was fully smitten with the Audi and was doing all the driving. I was full-time navigator—which means I also controlled the music (hypothetically). I had it all dialed in, a killer soundtrack with driving directions. “Vai dritto a Firenze!!” We got this.

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It's all about the Car

Ernest Hemingway once said, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” He could be right. As a young teen, before I could drive, my pal, Randy, and I bought a used racing go-kart with our paper route money. We were obsessed with auto racing; followed it closely; went to see the movie Grand Prix at the theater three times. We’d get Randy’s older sister to drive us to the race track, and we’d zip around the course in our screaming kart and pretend we were Dan Gurney or Mario Andretti… Until Randy crashed it. He escaped serious injury, but the kart was a near-complete loss. Our parents flipped out: they had thought we were buying a putt-putt kiddie kart, not a mini-rocket on wheels.

“No more racing,” my mom said firmly. “It’s too dangerous.”

So, I took up mountaineering.

Ter and I were southbound on Autostrada 22 when I pitched the idea of a side trip; something that would break up the all-day drive. The Ferrari factory was coming up soon, not far off the highway. And it had a cool museum. I mean, how could you possibly go to Italy and drive RIGHT BY THE FERRARI FACTORY and not stop? Right? I had to really sell it, because my wife is completely indifferent and practical when it comes to cars. If I gave her a choice between a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta or a Mazda 3 hatchback for her birthday… She’d pick the Mazda. Because it has cup holders. And besides, what do you need 730 horsepower for anyway?

Much to my surprise, she said: “Sure, let's go see it.”

That’s true love.

We turned off the A22 in Modena and drove through industrial parks and vast sunflower fields to the small town of Maranello. The area is renowned for its balsamic vinegar, and the opera maestro, Luciano Pavarotti, grew up not far from here. But Maranello itself is mostly known as the headquarters of Enzo Ferrari’s automotive legacy. The Museo Ferrari resides in a sleek, glass and steel building, just around the corner from the production car factory and racing complex (including their own private race track!). Inside you’ll find a cornucopia of sports cars; race cars; touring cars; old classics... even Enzo’s first office desk. It’s all here; enhanced with photographs and history. Even my wife, the automobile pragmatist, came away impressed. Though I’m confident she still prefers her Mazda 3 hatchback. It has cup holders.

Yeah, baby!

Enzo was eleven years old when he watched his first race, and he decided right then to be a race car driver when he grew up. At the age of twenty-two, he was was hired on to the Alfa Romeo factory racing team and competed under their banner throughout the 1920s (photo). Alfa Romeo would then promote him to team manager and task him with building the race cars as well. In this he excelled admirably, and after several winning seasons, he decided to go into business for himself—until World War II intervened and the Allies bombed his Maranello factory. Undaunted, Enzo rebuilt after the war and entered his first race under the Ferrari banner in 1947. He competed in thirteen races that year and won six of them. The beginning of a legend.

1954 250 GT... Enzo’s original mission was simply to
build race cars and win races. Period. But running a
first-class racing team is expensive. Hence, starting
in the early '50s, he began to build and sell luxury,
high-performance sports cars to help “finance” the
racing team. It was a huge success.

F12 Berlinetta... Limited production from 2012 thru 2017. Puts out 730 horsepower. The ultimate "date car." Over my price range. (way over)

The V12 power plant.

588 GT that competed in 24 Hours of LeMans in 2017. Over the years, Ferrari has won 14 Sports Car World Championships, including 8 victories of the 24 Hours of LeMans.

Formula One victory circle, each car here a winner
of a World Championship. In 68 years of F1 racing,
Ferrari has garnered 16 Driver's Championships,
15 Manufacturer’s Championships, and won a total
of 216 Grand Prix races.

Enzo with F1 driver Gilles Villeneuve - 1979

F1 "Aero" that John Surtees drove to win the 1964 Driver's Championship. Sleek and simple, but state-of-the-art for its day. Today’s F1 high-tech wonder cars are incredibly quick and complex, costing up to $15 million apiece.

Firenze

The Medieval streets of bustling old-town Florence are no wider than an alley and navigating them in a car is taxing, especially when you’re preoccupied with searching for your hotel, half lost, dodging motor scooters and pedestrians. As in Venice, mapping directions via iPhone is next to useless in the slot-canyon streets. And when we at last found the unpretentious Hotel Balcony—a simple blue sign over a glass door—we had fifteen minutes to unload before an attendant whisked our car away to God knows where for the next three days. That said, checking into the hotel was a breeze.

Julius Caesar founded a military garrison here on the Arno River in 59 BC and called the settlement Florentia. In time, the garrison would become a village, and the village became a town, and the town became a vibrant city-state. By the 14th century, the Republic of Florence was printing its own gold coins, called florins, and the Medici Bank was the most prosperous and respected bank in Europe. Medici: you’ll be hearing that name frequently here. That’s because the Medici family pretty much greased the wheels for the Italian Renaissance—and Florence would be its epicenter.

The Ponte Vecchio—which means “Old Bridge”—spans
the Arno River at the site of the ancient Roman
garrison. The current bridge was built in 1345. The
buildings on the bridge house goldsmith and jeweler
shops, which has been the edict since the 16th century.

A selfie from the Ponte Vecchio.

FLORENCE FACTOIDS
~ The city prospered in the Middle Ages as a hub for wool and textile production.
~ By the mid-14th century, all the streets were paved, the first European city to accomplish this.
~ Florentine merchant bankers, such as the Medici Bank, became the lenders of Europe, introducing innovations such as “bill of exchange” and “double-entry bookkeeping.”
~ The old Florentine/Tuscan dialect is the source of the contemporary Italian language that would spread across Italy during the Renaissance.
~ The famous wooden boy, Pinocchio, came from Florence, as did Carlo Lorenzini, author of the 1881 novel “The Adventures of Pinocchio.”
~ During the WW2 occupation, Nazis stripped the city of much of its artwork and spirited them away to Germany and Austria. The 2014 film, "Monuments Men", tells the story of the Allied effort towards the end of the war to recover most of these treasures.
~ Today, UNESCO reports that nearly a third of the world’s art treasures reside in Florence.

Equestrian monument of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1537 until his death in 1574. The House of Medici dominated Florentine politics for most of three centuries. They were early patrons of the arts and humanist revival that sparked the Renaissance; bankrolled the invention of the piano and the first opera; supported scientific innovation; funded the construction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore... Most things from that era in Florence have Medici fingerprints somewhere on it.

“Perseus with Head of Medusa” by Benvenuto Cellini, 1554. Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned the bronze sculpture, as well as many of the other works on display in the Piazza della Signoria.

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore on a warm summer night. Magical.

Ice Cream Espionage

Okay, here’s the scoop. I like ice cream. And by now, we had bellied up to gelato parlors everywhere we went: Venice; Cortina; Canazei… In Venice, there was an ice cream shop on every block. But here in Florence, there’s TWO on every block! What gives? Some scholars (ice-creamologists?) contend that the precursor to ice cream dates back thousands of years to China, and that the recipe was brought to Europe in the Marco Polo days. Maybe. But the first documentation of people making ice cream was in 16th-century Florence—which must’ve been difficult, because there were no electric freezers back then. Clearly it was top secret: If you could make ice cream, you could rule the world. I get it.

Enter Ruggeri, a Florentine butcher and part-time chef who participated in a food contest sponsored by the Medici family. The challenge was simple: Prepare an unconventional dish that had never been tasted before in Florence. The Medici frequently entertained, so they were always looking for something new to amaze their influential guests. Ruggeri prepared a creamy, iced concoction with a fruity taste. He won the contest and was brought onto the Medici court so that he wouldn’t share his yummy dessert with anyone else.

Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France and gelato junkie.

Enter Catherine de’ Medici. She was a child when she sampled Ruggeri’s top-secret dessert for the first time, and she was hooked (I can relate to Catherine). In fact, when she married the Duke of Orleans in 1533 and moved to France, she took Ruggeri with her. In this way, ice cream remained the secret dessert for French royalty. Or so she thought.

Enter Bernardo Buontalenti, a brilliant Florentine architect, painter, sculptor… and party planner for the Medici. In 1559, Buontalenti was tasked with preparing a lavish feast and stage performance for Cosimo I de' Medici and his esteemed guests. One of the big surprises of the evening was the dessert: iced cream made from milk, honey, egg yolks, and thin slices of orange and Bergamotto lemon for a burst of flavor. It was a huge hit and the people clamored for more. Meanwhile, Catherine—who by now was Queen of France—was probably thinking: “What the…?” So much for top secrets. You can still get that original ice cream flavor in Florence today. It's called "Buontalenti".

Masters of the Renaissance

Florentines had referred to it as “rinascimento,” which roughly means rebirth or revival. But it wouldn’t be until the 19th century before a French historian used the term “Renaissance” to define the era, and the name stuck. It was that 300-year transition when Western civilization crawled out of the Dark Ages; an awakening of intellect, art, and science. The proto-Renaissance poet and theorist, Dante, stood at the vanguard. He was a citizen of the Florentine republic. So too, Leonardo da Vinci. And Michelangelo. And Galileo... The roster is staggering. From Florence, the “rinascimento” would fan across Italy and most of Europe. As Peter Gabriel once said: "You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire."

But enough of the syrupy history lesson. You get the drift. Each morning, Terry and I would lace up our walking shoes and hoof it all over the old city, visiting museums; cathedrals; piazzas. There was art to marvel everywhere we turned. So, let’s get started…

The Uffizi Gallery.

GALLERIA UFFIZI
The Uffizi has the largest assemblage of Italian Renaissance art in the world, much of it collected by the House of Medici during the 16th and 17th centuries. The building, completed in 1581, served as offices for government magistrates and Medici businesses, while the top floor functioned as an art gallery and banquet hall for the Medici to entertain guests. Today it is dedicated entirely to art.

A bust of Lorenzo de’ Medici, aka “Lorenzo the Magnificent” (1449-1492) Though his father and grandfather patronized humanist philosophies and the arts, it was Lorenzo who would be the nexus. Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli were his age, and both had lived at the Medici palazzo at the start of their careers. Later, it would be Lorenzo who gave a 15-year-old Michelangelo his first break.

My personal Top Five in chronological order…

“Battle of San Romano” by Paolo Uccello - 1440
One of three paintings depicting different stages of the battle, all three of which once hung in the palazzo of Lorenzo the Magnificent. This painting is the only one still in Florence: the others reside in London and Paris. Uccello’s use of linear perspective and foreshortening was ground-breaking.

“Annunciation” by Leonardo da Vinci - 1475
This was Leonardo’s first painting. He was 23 years old.
Painter; sculptor; inventor; architect; engineer; scientist…
Leonardo is the prime exemplar of "Universal Genius,"
the most brilliant and diversely talented individual to have
lived in recorded history.

“Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli - 1485
My personal favorite, and this also hung on the palazzo walls
of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Provocative for its time, it was
the first non-religious nude painting since classical antiquity.
It was also the first large work of art to be painted on
stretched canvas. Botticelli was hip, and he saw where the
market was trending. Wealthy noble families would be the
future buyers of fine art, and stretched canvas was quite portable.

“Portrait of Pope Leo X with two Cardinals” by Raphael - 1518
An exemplary study of shadow, light, and candid detail (a style that Rembrandt would perfect 130 years later). Every picture tells a story, and this is certainly one of them. Before Leo X was pope, he was Giovanni de' Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The two cardinals that flank him are his cousins. And cardinals cast votes to elect popes. See where this is going? Just one of Leo X’s shenanigans that would spark the Protestant Reformation.

“Medusa” by Caravaggio - 1597
Cutting-edge art here: a 16th-century personification of Ozzy Osbourne. Caravaggio was a pioneer of the new emerging Baroque style, and he was commissioned to do this work as a gift for Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

ACADAMIA DI FIRENZE
Founded in 1784, the Academy is smaller than the Uffizi, specializing in Florentine artists. It is also the home of Michelangelo’s iconic “David”. Other sculptures by Michelangelo include the four half-finished works known as “The Four Prisoners”, which are quite extraordinary in the fact that you can see the life-like figures begin to emerge from giant blocks of marble. The man was a genius with a hammer and chisel.

“David” by Michelangelo – 1504
One of the most iconic symbols of Western civilization. It all started with a massive block of flawed marble that had been lying in the weeds of a stone yard for over forty years. Master sculptors, including Leonardo, were consulted to see if they could make something of it. But it was a 26-year-old upstart, Michelangelo, who convinced the Florentine council that he deserved the commission. It would take him over two years to complete, weighing in at six tons and a height of seventeen feet.

MUSEO GALILEO
The heart of the museum is Galileo Galilei, father of observational astronomy, modern physics, and the scientific method. The first floor is devoted to the Medici collection of instruments that had belonged to Galileo and others, reiterating the crucial role that the House of Medici played in supporting the advancement of early science. Galileo’s first telescopes are here, as well as some of his original thermometers and experiments in acceleration and motion. The most bizarre item on display was Galileo’s right middle finger—the same middle finger, I imagine, that he used for gesturing at the Inquisition priests when they demanded he recant his belief in a heliocentric model of the solar system. The most brilliant man of his day would spend the last nine years of his life under house arrest for heresy.

Galileo Galilei

This is the largest Ptolemaic armillary sphere still in existence (about 6 feet in diameter). Constructed in 1593, it represented the known universe according to the concepts developed by Aristotle and perfected by Ptolemy, where the earth is at the center and all heavenly bodies orbit the earth. At the time, the Catholic Church and most scientists adhered to this geocentric model, as opposed to the radical Copernican model where the sun was at the center. Galileo’s extensive observations using the newly-invented telescope would lead him to side with Copernicus and claim the Ptolemaic model was bogus. He published his proofs in a treatise called “Sidereus Nuncius” (Starry Messenger), which got him into hot water with the Pope.

A fine collection of 17th-century telescopes. Dutchman
Hans Lippershey built the first one in 1608. Galileo
heard about it, and he was promptly making his own
the following year.

A terrestrial globe made by Dutch cartographer, Willem Blaeu, circa 1645-48. During the Age of Discovery, maps were being updated constantly as new information was collected from the latest explorations of the New World.

BASILICA DI SANTA CROCE

The Church of the Holy Cross is the largest Franciscan church in the world. Construction began in 1294, though additions and renovations would continue for centuries. Its design reflects the austere approach of the Franciscans, though many of the sixteen chapels inside are decorated elaborately with frescoes by Giotto. Michelangelo is entombed here, as well as Galileo, Rossini, and Machiavelli. There are also ornate memorial plaques for Leonardo and Dante, though they are not interned here.

Basilica di Santa Croce

Statue of Dante Alighieri outside the Church of the Holy Cross. He was the proto-Renaissance Man; father of Italian literature and author of the epic “Divine Comedy”; the first to write his works in the Tuscan/Italian dialect, marking the beginning of the end for Latin as a common language.

Tomb of Michelangelo (1475-1564)

Tomb of Galileo (1564-1642) Note of interest here: Galileo was born the same year that Michelangelo passed away.

Brunelleschi's Dome

You must ascend 463 stone steps to reach the top of the tallest building in Florence. That would be the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, more commonly known as the Church of Florence, or Duomo di Firenze, or as the locals call it: “the Duomo.” It was a hot afternoon—so hot, pigeons were grounded—but we were up for making the climb.

“Are you afraid of heights?” our tour guide, Valentina, asked before we started.

Ummm… No.

Soon we were following her up dim, narrow passageways to the top—only we didn’t quite make it halfway before one of the four people in our group remembered that he suffered from acrophobia. From our airy vantage point on the catwalk around the base of the dome, the tiled floor of the nave was 170 feet directly below. The guy turned back, and his wife continued on up with us.

The Duomo is not the oldest church in the city, but at 500 feet long and 376 feet high, it is by far the grandest. Construction commenced in 1296 and would continue in fits and starts for 140 years. The colossal dome was the final feature to be built—and nobody had a clue how to do it. The diameter at the base would be 144 feet: larger than any prior dome, other than the one on the Pantheon in Rome, which had been erected a thousand years earlier using coffered slabs of concrete (technology lost with the fall of the Roman Empire). The task to solve this problem was awarded to Filippo Brunelleschi, a talented Florentine goldsmith who was also an architect/engineer and the father of linear perspective drawing. His innovative design began with the egg shape of the dome, but just as crucial was the interlocking herringbone pattern for laying the bricks (check out this cool Nat Geo video clip). He had many detractors who said it would never work… But it did. Today, it is still the largest non-reinforced brick dome ever built.

The panoramic view from the top was magnificent. Valentina pointed out several landmarks and shared some of the history. People have been clambering up here for almost six centuries now, casting their eye upon the terracotta-roofed city and the Tuscan hills beyond. As for Brunelleschi: his tomb lies in a crypt under the church nave, with an epitaph that reads: “Here lies the body of the great ingenious man, Filippo Brunelleschi of Florence.” I’m sure he’s still smiling today. Because his dome still stands.

The Duomo di Firenze with Brunelleschi’s dome in the background.

A marble statue commemorating Filippo Brunelleschi was added to the front of the Duomo in 1838.

Looking down into the nave from the base of the dome.

Standing in the same spot as the prior photo, but looking
up at the ceiling. It would take seven years to paint all
the frescoes here. Giorgio Vasari started the work in 1572,
and Federico Zuccaro would finish it in 1579.