How does retain its appeal when it resembles, in many ways a high end shopping mall?A small city, very walkable, the street level is a shopper’s paradise — high end designer stores, cafes, ristorantes, gelaterias, osterias —you get the picture. And crowds, even now when Easter is still a week or more away, we found ourselves snaking through crowds in the piazzas and museums.  

Yet the feel created by the medieval and renaissance architecture is not erased by the commercialism. Our guide told us that there is no real building plan to Florence, just the notion back in the Middle Ages and Renaissance that it was safer to be within the walls than outside of them.  So the alleys twist and wind through each other opening into the space of piazzas  defined by the walls of palazzos built centuries ago by the wealthy. 

There seems to be some ambivalence in Florence about the purpose of streets —sidewalks are close to nonexistent so the question is whether the streets are for pedestrians or cars.  It has never been fully answered so the narrow thoroughfares are both pedestrian walkways and open to vehicles, which make for interesting walking and driving.

We visited the Uffizi with a guide who gave us a whirlwind 3 hour lecture .  We visited the David statue at the Accademia  housed with a number of Michelangelo statues only half carved, examples of the idea that the figure is within the stone and must be released from it. I decided not to take photos of the art (well, maybe one or two of the Michelangelo sculptures) because art history books have done a much better job of capturing them than I ever could.

We went to Oltrarno crossing the Arno on the PonteVecchio to view the city from the Michelangelo Piazza.  We visited the Pitti Palace, the house built by de Medici’s princess wife who longed for a home with gardens.  We wondered at the scope and grandeur of the rooms there aside from the collection of Rafaels.  We went to a concert of Baroque music with six musicians playing Mozart, Vivaldi and Bach at the Church of St Stefan – the acoustics were fabulous and the musicians did a fine job.

We certainly ate well.