Day 44 - Sunday 16 June - Florence museums

Sunday 16 June

We headed out fairly early to Palazzo Vecchio, which was the ‘town hall’ of Florence for several centuries.  The only thing open when we arrived was the museum, so we climbed the stairs to the first floor.  There are rooms that were public/audience-type rooms, and private apartments, all with grand ceilings, grand paintings, and occasionally sculptures and furnishings, much the same as we’ve seen in other places. 

But the thing that was different here was the map room, with walls full of C15-16 maps of all the world except Australia.  In the middle there was a huge globe, but it was so dark that you could hardly see any markings on it.

From here it was about 250 steps to the top of the tower.  We both did the first section, which opened out onto a terrace with grilled windows.  D decided not to go further, so I did, finding it much easier than yesterday’s Duomo climb.  There were windows for the breeze, and it wasn’t so steep.  So when I got back down, D decided to go up too. 
 

Then we went down to the basement, to check out a bit of archaeology from Roman times.

We bought sandwiches and sat in the shade on the step of a closed shop to have lunch.  Then we went to the Duomo museum.  We may have been here in 2000, but there was much that we didn’t recognise, so it seems that it has been renovated since then.  There are lots of carvings, which may or may not be replicas, which may or may not have come from the Duomo or the Baptistry, and we were a bit confused.  There were also priestly vestments and reliquaries. 

 Some old nativity sheep

 The original Doors of Paradise from the Baptistry

 The original wooden model of the Duomo dome

 Michaelagelo's 2nd Pieta, showing himself as Nicodemus.

It was about 16:00 when we left, so we had gelati while we listened to some buskers.  

At 17:00 we went into the Duomo for Vespers (with Gregorian chants which interested me).  There were 12 clergy, 2 lay musicians and about 30 in the congregation when it finished. We were given an order of service by another member of the congregation, but it appears to have been the wrong one, because we couldn’t follow anything.  Our benefactor knew exactly what was happening, and sang out the responses with great voice.  The organist had played a good recessional which satisfied us, so we did not stay for '18:00 mass with organ', and so had dinner at a respectable time.