Florence is a great city for tourists. There’s as much to see and do as here as there is in a large city, but Florence is relatively compact, so anything you’d like to see is within easy reach. Our next Florentine destinations are Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. The overcast sky is getting darker and threatening rain, but let’s go anyway.
Earlier today. we had a fantastic lunch in Fiesole. The view of Florence from there is worth the short trip out of town. And if you’re curious about anything Etruscan, Fiesole is the place to go.
When we rode the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus back into town from Fiesole, we decided to stay on board and ride it all the way to Patti Palace and Boboli Gardens.
Crossing the Arno
The Arno river runs through Florence. Most of the city is on the north side of the river. Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens dominate the south side.
The Arno starts in the Apennine mountains, east of Florence. It flows west through Tuscany, through Florence, through Pisa, then empties into the sea. It’s not a very well-behaved river. Its water level rises and falls quickly, and it has flooded Florence badly more than once.
Our bus crossed the river and started climbing through a forested area on the other side. After winding around for a while on a twisty, narrow road, (in our large bus), we popped out into a clearing. We had reached our destination – Pitti Palace.
Pitti Palace
Luca Pitti was a wealthy Florentine banker. Very wealthy. He lived way back in the 15th century. Florentine money men had invented modern-day banking to support the wool trade. (Remember?) Signor Pitti had made the most of it.
Pitti Palace was built to be Signor Pitti’s main residence. It was huge. The main building occupied something like 100,000 square feet. Who needs a house that big? A rich, jealous banker, that’s who.
At the time, Cosimo de’ Medici ran Florence. (That’s one way to put it). Luca Pitti was his partner in governing Florence, but at the time, he was a notch or two down on the wealth-and-power scale. That probably kept him up at night.
When you’re as ambitious as Signor Patti must have been, it’s not how much money you have. It’s how much more than the next guy you have.
So when Cosimo de’ Medici died, Luca Pitti set out to build a house bigger and grander than Cosimo’s place. Hence the opulence and the massive size.
And guess what? The palace ended up in Medici hands, anyway. Eleanor de Toledo, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and wife of Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, bought it. And she made it even bigger. Now it measures over 300,000 square feet.
Boboli Gardens
A palace that big needs to sit on nice grounds, so Eleanor bought the surrounding land and turned it into what is now called Boboli Gardens.
Before visiting the palace, we decided to take a walk through Boboli Gardens. Back in the day, Italian gardens were the envy of the rest of Europe. French aristocrats, most noticeably at Versailles, modeled their gardens after what they had seen in Italy.
Italian landscape designers modeled their creations after Roman gardens. They aren’t really “gardens” per se. They’re formally laid-out parks dotted with statues, fountains, grottos, and exotic plants and flowers. They’re like big, outdoor museums.
Buontalenti Grotto
Grottos in Italian gardens are man-made caves. They’re designed with the idea that people will walk inside and be inspired by what they find. The Buontalenti Grotto in Boboli Gardens is one of the neatest. Signor Buontalenti designed it to make one feel like they’ve walked into a fairy tale.
He brought in stalagmites and stalactites from real caves to make it spooky like a natural cave. Animals and pipe-playing shepherds peer out at you from ornate rock walls.
A copy of Michelangelo’s statue, The Prisoners, occupies a corner niche in one of three chambers.
We had started heading back toward Pitti Palace when the wind suddenly picked up. I could smell rain. The sky had been clouding up that afternoon, and by now it had gotten pretty dark.
I looked up to see if it was going to rain. I got hit right in the eye with a big raindrop, so I guess I had my answer. Next thing we knew, it was raining for real. Hard!
We ran the rest of the way to Pitti Palace and ducked into a side door that wasn’t locked. Whoa. What did we just stumble into?
To be continued…
Photo at the top of this post, credit: Visit Tuscany
