I’ve been to Florence once, more than fifteen years ago. I feel like it’s fallen off since then, since social media flattened the entire nation of Italy into a lemon-print dress that everyone is wearing, an okayish gelato you can get in New York, and a single tumbling sea cliff that no one realizes needs to be scaled, twice a day over 500 crumbling stone steps, to reach your hotel or a rocky thumbnail of beach.
Florence, somehow, despite the Uffizi and the David and the Ponte Vecchio, is simply not photogenic in ways that appeal to social media-defined sensibilities. Puglia has its pointy little hobbit houses, the false mystique of the “undiscovered.” Sicily has a volcano, recently-faded poverty repackaged as authenticity, and the blessing of Hollywood. And Venice is Venice — singular, drowning, empty of real residents, a shell of a place. They all photograph well, however, their architecture and their situations along bright coasts and neat hillsides working as a kind of shorthand for leisure, nice food, romance, culture. Stand in front if it, hold up a phone, and you inherit all of these things in an instant.
Florence is different. Its palette is earth-toned, subdued. Its impulses are academic, its famous sites hidden away indoors, often behind glass. This is especially galling at the Uffizi, where you gaze up at lovely Venus, newly sprung from her shell, only to encounter a slash of glare from the poorly placed gallery lighting. You have to do a kind of dance, look at it from odd angles, to see the whole painting at once.
Despite Florence’s proximity to the sea, it does not feel of the coast in the same way that Portofino or Naples does. The Arno is muddy. The Renaissance palaces feel top-heavy and severe, the church interiors unadorned. If you’re looking for flourish, you will do better in Siena with its rowdy, rainbow-bannered horse races, or in the small towns of the Tuscan countryside where you can drink wine, gaze out at the cypress trees, dream yourself a life in a crumbling villa. The sense of fantasy there is more complete, the colors read brighter on the grid.
I am thinking of going back to Florence. While I was there so long ago, I took almost no photos — a surefire sign, for me, of dodgy emotional weather. In them, there is little sun, and the shots are so tight that I can barely make out where most of them were taken. In the single photo I took of myself, my hair is caught in a gust of wind and my head is down, as though I am being blown out of the frame of my own selfie. It was early spring. It was not warm. I was homesick, pining over a man, and a bit broke. Even Rome — gilded heap of civilization’s rubble — can soothe such miseries. Florence offers harder lines, shittier weather, a shorter memory, and less sympathy.
My younger self — the same young woman who first learned about Botticelli in an Anne Rice novel — was not made for Florence. And maybe I too, even without the mirror glare of social media, was just looking for the money shot. The backdrop from which I would inherit glamor, education, culture, all in an instant. The only thing I take back there now is the understanding that none of those things can be bestowed, in one instant or ten thousand, and sometimes you need to see a place more than once to hear what it’s trying to tell you.
Notes on a Future Trip
I need to get to the Boboli Garden, which I missed the first time because I took a wrong turn — no joke — and ended up in the Bardini Garden by mistake. (Ah, travel before Google Maps.) The Bardini Garden is gorgeous. Think wisteria tunnels, niches full of vines and sculptures, and beautiful views of the city. I spent the day reading Invisible Cities while making my way from one stone bench to the next until I hit the exit. Note that Invisible Cities — the greatest book about travel ever written? — is about Venice, not Florence. So I suppose I was reading the wrong book in the wrong garden and that deserves a do-over.
The Galileo Museum, which holds a collection of the astronomer’s instruments.
The Cathedral of Santo Stefano in the suburb of Prato, which is known for its striking black-and-white marble. This is described at length in Mary McCarthy’s The Stones of Florence, which I will be more or less be using as a guidebook for my next trip. She describes this alternating marble pattern — a signature of Florence and Tuscany — as symbolizing the region’s warring factions.
The gnomon — an astronomical timekeeping device — in the Duomo. A small opening in the dome directs a ray of sunlight onto makings in the floor that correspond to calendar events. It is 500 years old and is thought to be the oldest instrument of its kind in Europe.
For some reason, I don’t quite think of Florence as a “hotel city,” in the same way I think of Milan (urbane, angular, remote) or Venice (a crumbling palazzo, a romantic bolthole on a street no one can find) as hotel cities. But there are some dreamy options here.
The Hotel La Gemma, chic but not unnervingly so, a lovely-seeming restaurant, and a palette that reminds me of spring in the Tuscan countryside
Collegio alla Querce, plush and full of character but utterly restrained — not unlike Florence itself
Il Tornabuoni, alas there must be at least one moddish, tricked out palazzo
Drinks in the hotel bar at The Savoy also seem in order
There’s also a new Hoxton in Florence which looks cheeky and au courant but I’m still trying to get my head around this brand (Have you been to this hotel? Hit me with a comment, below.)
Shopping for hand-made goods, especially leather, is a long-held tradition for visitors to Florence, so I’m ready to pick up a new passport cover, to start. But I’m also hunting for marbled paper and books that contain marbled endpapers. Paper marbling came to Florence via the Middle East in the 17th century and there are still tons of tiny shops selling papers, hand-bound journals, pens, and other stationery. My first stop will be il Torchio.
Florence, Italy, 2008 / Laura Motta
The truth of Italy must be told. I still find it an enjoyable place to visit. Go back to Italy and maybe you'll be surprised. Maybe...