Today we spent about ten hours in Florence (Firenze in Italian).
We started off by walking around the outside of the Duomo (the main cathedral and focal point of the city). It was gorgeous!!!
Then, we went to the Accademia, where we saw David and other art. After going to the Accademia, we went to the Uffizi museum, saw a cool bridge (Ponte Vecchio), had dinner at Obica (a mozzarella bar), and caught our train back to Rome.
Uffizi means palace of offices in old Italian.
The museum building is so big that if you ask Wikipedia about the size, it will tell you that the ‘size is overwhelming’.
Uffizi is one of the first modern museums. In the sixteenth century it was opened to visitors by request. Then in 1765, it was opened to the public. The Uffizi formally became a museum in 1865.
The history of Uffizi is very interesting, but I did not find the art interesting. The art I saw was just sculptures of heads (sometimes with busts or full bodies) and some paintings which all felt very Christian to me.
Just like Rome, Florence is separated by a river. In the narrowest part of the river, there is bridge called Ponte Vecchio (old bridge). The current bridge was built in 1345. On top of the bridge there are a bunch of stores, now they are mostly for fancy jewelry. Originally the stores on the bridge were butchers, and they would dump their waste into the river.
I had a really fun time in Florence, but was sad that we weren’t even there for 24 hours.
-Naomi
The Duomo (the dome of the cathedral is red)
A hallway of head sculptures at Uffizi
View of the bridge and water at sunset