Florence, day two

Ciao! It's been a while - I've been really busy the last few weeks, but I'm in town for the weekend, so I'll try and catch up. Two weeks ago, we went back to Florence for our Wednesday class field trip. This time, we saw the outside of the Florence Cathedral (they were having services that day, so we couldn't go in - I'll get to go in eventually...), the baptistry right across from it, the Palazzo Davanzati, and the Cathedral Museo. The picture above is me in the cupola on the top of the dome of the Florence Cathedral (really, it is! more info later...)
This is the front facade of the Florence Cathedral, and the tower next to it. It really has a commanding presence in the square, and was much whiter and colored and much more ornate than I had expected from the pictures in books. I can't wait to explore the inside too.
...another angle of the front.
This is the baptistry that faces the cathedral. The doors are covered in gold, which was only recently discovered in the last century when it under went some intense cleaning. I can only imagine how much grime must have been on it for no one to realize the gleaming gold before. One interesting fact I learned: the builders, when using gold like this in outside architecture, would systematically put scratches on certain parts of the relief sculpture because if not, when the sunlight hit it, it would have been so shiny that no one would have been able to see the sculptures.

Inside the baptistry, an octogon-shaped building, had large gold leafed frescos all over the ceiling depicting Christ and John the Baptist's life. People are still baptized here today, and my professor, Paolo, a native of Florence and also baptized there as a child, said "You can't be considered a true Florentine unless you've been baptized in the Florence Baptistry."
... just one of many grand arched gateways throughout the city, and much of Italy for that matter.

Here is the Palazzo Davantzi. My professor actually lived in this castle-like palace as a child. His dad was a curator for fine art history museums, and they lived here during the second world war for a few years as they hid and protected priceless works of art from being destroyed in the museums by invaders. Pretty cool, no? ...one of the bedrooms with the original furnishings. All of the walls are done with handpainted murals that look like wallpaper - very impressive, in my opinion.
Next, we went to the Cathedral Museo. Here, they store many of the sculptures that once were actually on the Florence Cathedral and Baptistry. Over the last century, in order to better preserve them, the city has been taking all the sculptures, one-by-one, and making replicas to put on the building, and putting the real ones in this museum. So, the statues on the facade are actually just copies.
... these are from the front. If you look closely, you can see the same Mary statue in the center of the facade right below the giant rose window.
...these are the originals from the baptistry.

...here are some of the frieze tiles.
Also in the Museo is Michaelangelo's Fourth Pieta, done in marble. They say that he cut off the left leg of Christ while making it (meaning it didn't just break off from age, like many ancient sculptures we see), and no one is quite sure why. ... sure makes for interesting debates, though.
After a long day with the class, we stopped for some pizza (l-r: Grace, me, Erin, Chris)...
...and this was our view for lunch. So cool, huh?
One other thing I thought was interesting: there is so much polution that they are constantly cleaning the cathedral. There is always scaffolding on a section that just moves around the building as they clean it. While it was a little hard to tell what was dirty at first, seeing the cleaned area right next to the dirty area really makes it obvious how polluted the place was.

... waiting in line to go up to the top of the dome. While there was a service inside the cathedral, the dome was still open for visitors. I will admit, I was quite apprehensive about going up there since it was so high, but my friends all wanted to go, so I tagged along.
...luckily, most of the stairs were inside the really thick walls, so I didn't have to look down as we climbed the 486 steps (they said how many, I didn't actually count). I was very relieved.
Just one of the views through the little windows punched in the meter thick walls of the narrow staircases.
Halfway up the stairs, the walkway takes you out into the cathedral and circles the inside of the dome, within feet of the paintings on the ceiling. At some points you could practically touch the paintings themselves. Though they were astounding to look at and great works of art, I was surprised to find that the paintings weren't as detailed as I thought, and in some places actually quite simplistic and sketch-like. I guess being hundreds of feet in the air, details don't make much difference to the viewer on the ground.
We finally made it to the top. I was petrified at first, but after a while, you could really just look and take in the whole view of all of Florence. It was pretty spectacular sight and you really could see everything from up there (and, it doesn't feel like it's swaying at all like the St. Louis Arch or the Sear's Tower - a definitely plus).

...granted, I was too chicken to look over the edge - this is one of my friends pictures.
...the top of the cupola.
...and the reward for making it all the way up and all the way back down (nearly 1000 stair steps in all), a yummy gelato cone! :D
One last place, my friend Jennifer really wanted to see Palazzo Medici, a house we studied in Architecture History. Unfortunately, it's closed on Wednesdays, so we only got to see the outside. It was kind of neat though, seeing something I remembered from class, and I had no idea the stones on the bottom were so big.

... sitting in front of the Medici house. All in all, a good end to a fun time in Florence.