Florence is a beautiful city filled with medieval buildings, Renaissance art, and lots of tourists. You can’t help but be amazed as you walk around the historic district of the city. Let me show you a couple of the sights, starting with the Duomo. The Duomo or more correctly the Cattredale di Santa Maria del Fiore is located in the geographic center of the city.
The facade (which was added about 600 years after the church was built) is white, green, and pink marble. In the niches are sculptures by several pre-Renaissance artists (these are actually replicas, the originals were moved to the Duomo museum. The cathedral is topped with Brunelleschi’s magnificent dome, the iconic image of the city.
Adjacent to the cathedral are the Campanile (bell tower) and the Baptistry.
The Baptistry has two amazing bronze doors created by Ghiberti; see the second picture for a close-up of two of the panels.
The ceiling of the Baptistery is a manificent glass mosaic created in the 1200s.
A couple of other noteworthy churches are the Orsanmichele church for its beautiful tabernacle built in the mid 1300s as a way for bubonic plaque survivors to thank God and Chiesa (church) of Santa Croce which is one of Florence’s largest and oldest churches and is the burial site of Michelangelo and Galileo.
The Piazza della Signoria is the main civic center. On one side stands the Palazzo Vecchio; the palatial town hall of the Medici family. Michangelos’s David used to stand in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
On another side of the Piazzo is the Loggia dei Lanza which was originally a forum for free speech. The Medici family believed that good art was more desirable than free speech and installed a number of sculptures including The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna and Perseus by Cellini.
Other Floretine sites include the Piazza Republicca and Ponte Vecchio over the river Arno.
