We did four day trips to the most famous tourist cities: Florence, Venice, Pisa and San Marino.
Florence was first. The "sights" were crazy busy. We flagged looking inside the Duomo (Cathedral) because the queue was too long, especially in the heat.
Oddly, once you wandered away from the main areas the crowds thinned out to almost nothing. Instead of a queue and paying a small fortune to climb the Duomo for the view we wandered across to the other side of the river. We took in some Renaissance gardens and then the Belvedere fortress which, as its name suggests, has excellent views of the city. It was only a couple of Euros, and was virtually empty, so much better value than climbing the cathedral (also, of course, the most important thing in the view is the cathedral, so being on it kind of spoils it).
We did visit the Uffizi Gallery, if only to see what the fuss is all about. We went late in the day, because Alison hoped it might be less crowded, but it was absolutely chocker. Thirty minutes of queuing, followed by 10 minutes of security and shuffling in, to a museum packed full even before the tour groups came and blocked everyone.
Pisa has a lovely cathedral and baptistry to which the famous tower is attached, which is where everyone goes. Once you wander away from that it, and the main street leading there, it too is quiet. It turns out that Pisa has almost all its medieval city walls, which was a nice surprise.
We did San Marino from Rimini. It's a funny wee town, perched on a ridiculously steep mountain, but a nice place to visit for an afternoon.
One thing that did annoy me about San Marino, and all of Italy really, was their city museum. In most of Europe we have visited so far the towns divide their museums into quite distinct categories. These usually are ethnographic, archaeological, art, specialist, regional and city museums, and they stick more or less to their area of specialty.
The city museums are the ones I like, because they usually have quite a lot of detail about the history of the city to explain what we could see about us – why the city had been settled, what it traded in, when and why and where it expanded.
But in Italy, history museums are prone to becoming art and archaeological museums. So the San Marino city museum, had almost nothing about the history of the city. What it had was various art and antiquarian works made or owned by city members, many of really quite low quality. You could have told from the museum that San Marino had a Communist government for a few decades after WWII, for example.
Many of the other cities we were in didn't even have city museums. They had five or six art museums of different sorts, but nothing about their histories. You can even see the incredible focus on art with things like the Wikipedia articles on their churches, which often give a very brief history, a bit about architecture and then extensive details about the sculptures and paintings inside.
Finally Venice. I have never really wanted to go to Venice – and this despite owning several books on its history – because I feared it would be all crowds and gondolas and tourist tat. I persuaded Alison and Matilda that we should go there via the lagoon and its islands (specifically, Chioggia, Palestrina and Lido). They were interesting in their own right, although far well less known. But importantly that meant we approached Venice proper from the sea side first. It was a good decision, as the approach gave a much better sense of the city than you get from being entirely on the land.
The approach was like dozens of films and documentaries I must have seen of it. The buildings themselves were like the hundreds of photographs and Canaletto paintings I've seen. It had an amazing familiarity for a place we've never been to.
It was very crowded and was full of tourist shops, but nonetheless we enjoyed it.
Whereas "Florence" is really just a few buildings and piazzas with art galleries, and "Pisa" is really just one square, "Venice" genuinely is the entire city – and it is larger than I had realised from the (many) maps of it I have seen. Even wandering quite small back streets there were interesting and picturesque things to see and they were of a piece – whereas you don't have to wander far off the main sights and Florence is not remotely the medieval city of the tourist part.
I'm glad we went, but I'm also glad we only did it as a day trip (and half of that getting there via the lagoon).
Florence was first. The "sights" were crazy busy. We flagged looking inside the Duomo (Cathedral) because the queue was too long, especially in the heat.
The queue down the side of the Duomo, (this photo starts 100 m back in the queue)
Oddly, once you wandered away from the main areas the crowds thinned out to almost nothing. Instead of a queue and paying a small fortune to climb the Duomo for the view we wandered across to the other side of the river. We took in some Renaissance gardens and then the Belvedere fortress which, as its name suggests, has excellent views of the city. It was only a couple of Euros, and was virtually empty, so much better value than climbing the cathedral (also, of course, the most important thing in the view is the cathedral, so being on it kind of spoils it).
We did visit the Uffizi Gallery, if only to see what the fuss is all about. We went late in the day, because Alison hoped it might be less crowded, but it was absolutely chocker. Thirty minutes of queuing, followed by 10 minutes of security and shuffling in, to a museum packed full even before the tour groups came and blocked everyone.
Pisa has a lovely cathedral and baptistry to which the famous tower is attached, which is where everyone goes. Once you wander away from that it, and the main street leading there, it too is quiet. It turns out that Pisa has almost all its medieval city walls, which was a nice surprise.
We did San Marino from Rimini. It's a funny wee town, perched on a ridiculously steep mountain, but a nice place to visit for an afternoon.
One thing that did annoy me about San Marino, and all of Italy really, was their city museum. In most of Europe we have visited so far the towns divide their museums into quite distinct categories. These usually are ethnographic, archaeological, art, specialist, regional and city museums, and they stick more or less to their area of specialty.
The city museums are the ones I like, because they usually have quite a lot of detail about the history of the city to explain what we could see about us – why the city had been settled, what it traded in, when and why and where it expanded.
But in Italy, history museums are prone to becoming art and archaeological museums. So the San Marino city museum, had almost nothing about the history of the city. What it had was various art and antiquarian works made or owned by city members, many of really quite low quality. You could have told from the museum that San Marino had a Communist government for a few decades after WWII, for example.
Many of the other cities we were in didn't even have city museums. They had five or six art museums of different sorts, but nothing about their histories. You can even see the incredible focus on art with things like the Wikipedia articles on their churches, which often give a very brief history, a bit about architecture and then extensive details about the sculptures and paintings inside.
The leaning tower of Venice. Not so famous.
Finally Venice. I have never really wanted to go to Venice – and this despite owning several books on its history – because I feared it would be all crowds and gondolas and tourist tat. I persuaded Alison and Matilda that we should go there via the lagoon and its islands (specifically, Chioggia, Palestrina and Lido). They were interesting in their own right, although far well less known. But importantly that meant we approached Venice proper from the sea side first. It was a good decision, as the approach gave a much better sense of the city than you get from being entirely on the land.
The approach was like dozens of films and documentaries I must have seen of it. The buildings themselves were like the hundreds of photographs and Canaletto paintings I've seen. It had an amazing familiarity for a place we've never been to.
It was very crowded and was full of tourist shops, but nonetheless we enjoyed it.
Whereas "Florence" is really just a few buildings and piazzas with art galleries, and "Pisa" is really just one square, "Venice" genuinely is the entire city – and it is larger than I had realised from the (many) maps of it I have seen. Even wandering quite small back streets there were interesting and picturesque things to see and they were of a piece – whereas you don't have to wander far off the main sights and Florence is not remotely the medieval city of the tourist part.
I'm glad we went, but I'm also glad we only did it as a day trip (and half of that getting there via the lagoon).
No comments:
Post a Comment