A Month in Bella Italia

[Lisbeth]

There is always unaesthetic cranes, cables or wires somewhere when you want the perfect shot in town or elsewhere

[Flutterby]

[Richprins]

Looks like they are constantly doing maintenance!

[Lisbeth]

If they want to avoid the old houses to fall into pieces, they have to Remember how old everything is

[Pumbaa]

Extreme interesting, Flutterby,

and I got more and more hooked on this city

[Flutterby]

I would definitely recommend a visit to Florence and Rome. They are totally different but equally beautiful!

[Flutterby]

After the Uffizi, we went back to the Palazzo Vecchio. The inside is made up of a number of rooms, the most imposing of which is the Salone dei Cinquecento (Room of 500). This is the largest and most important room in the Palazzo Vecchio. This impressive hall has a length of 54 meters, a width of 23 meters and a height of 18 meters. By volume it is the largest room in Italy built for the management of civil power. It was built in 1494 by Simone del Pollaiolo, on commission of Savonarola who wanted it as a seat of the Grand Council consisting of 500 members.

Later the hall was enlarged by Giorgio Vasari so that Grand Duke Cosimo I could hold his court in this chamber. During this transformation famous (but unfinished) works were lost, including the Battle of Cascina by Michelangelo, and the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo da Vinci. The surviving decorations in this hall were made between 1555 and 1572 by Giorgio Vasari and his helpers, among them Livio Agresti from Forlì. They mark the culmination of mannerism and make this hall the showpiece of the palace. On the walls are large and expansive frescoes that depict battles and military victories by Florence over Pisa and Siena.

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You can see the scale of these paintings when compared to the size of the Brat.

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The ceiling consists of 39 panels also constructed and painted by Vasari and his assistants, representing Great Episodes from the life of Cosimo I, the quarters of the city and the city itself and towards the center is the apotheosis : Scene of His Glorification as Grand Duke of Florence and Tuscany.

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The Brat trying to get the perfect shot of the ceiling!

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The sides of the hall are decorated with a series of statues on high pedestals among which stands the Genius of Victory by Michelangelo, sculpted for the tomb of Julius II and donated to Cosimo I by the nephew of the artist Leonardo Buonarroti.

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The hall seen from the 1st floor.

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[Flutterby]

In a small hallway on the first floor of the Palazzo Vecchio is Dante's death mask. In the past, this relief was considered to be the actual Dante death mask, carved directly from the face of the lifeless Dante Alighieri. Recent studies, though, consider it more likely that this relief is the cast of a lost sepulchral effigy of Dante. Of course, this theory does not deprive the mask of its value and its suggestive power: that is why the mask is still preserved in the most important palace in Florence

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Leaving the Palazzo Vecchio.

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Later on that afternoon we went into a little bookshop near the Duomo.

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Inside the bookshop I found this. This was the actual bookshop mentioned in Dan Brown's 'Inferno' and many of the places we had visited that day also feature in the book, notably the Room of 500 and the room with Dante's death mask. I'm a huge Dan Brown fan, so really enjoyed discovering this!

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[Richprins]

Some fancy shots and info, Flutts!

How big are those wall paintings??!!

Dirty Brat rolling on floor!

[Flutterby]

Yes, those paintings are huge!