Tuscan Traveler

After three days, the reservation line reports all of the spots on the Percorso del Principe tours have been filled.  Tuscan Traveler suggests that such popularity calls for more tours on more days…

The Vasari Corridor, also known as the Percorso del Principe (Path of the Prince), is open to the general public until July 2010 on a limited schedule. A special part of the city’s historical heritage that has been under the control of few select guides and museum officials (often costing the visitor more than 100 euro for a short tour) has been declared open to all by the new mayor of Florence.

A Unique Opportunity

Visitors to Florence know that to miss the Uffizi, the Ponte Vecchio with its famous gold merchants, and the gaudy splendors of the Pitti Palace is to miss Florence’s best-known sites.

What many tourists do not know is that along this same sightseeing path they also have a unique opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Renaissance nobility. Here they can view a vast collection of paintings usually reserved for the pleasure of a select few. It is called the Vasari Corridor.

Vasari Corridor seen from the Uffizi Gallery

The Vasari Corridor is an aerial passageway that connects the Palazzo Vecchio on one side of the River Arno to the Palazzo Pitti on the other. It passes over roofs and bridge of the Ponte Vecchio, and through galleries, mansions and churches. At over 500 meters (.33 miles), it is the longest single passageway of paintings and portraits in the world.

In 2010, the Italian Cultural Ministry and the City of Florence, urged on by Mayor Renzi, created a special “Prince’s Itinerary”, Il Percorso del Principe, as a guided tour to introduce the public to the Vasari Corridor. Still relatively unknown, it is one of the most exceptional and, until recently, hidden treasures of Renaissance architecture and art.

Tour participants not only see a fabulous art collection, but also are shown a hidden route with unique views and unexpected secret glimpses of the classic Florentine cityscape while walking above the heads of tourists swarming the streets below.

History of the Corridor

In the 1540’s, Cosimo I, an enlightened despot who ruled Florence and all of Tuscany, lived with his Spanish wife Eleonora di Toledo and their children above the “shop” in the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florence City Hall. Eleonora was in charge of the family finances and disliked living in the Palazzo Vecchio. In 1549, she found a house she did want, and so purchased the Palazzo Pitti from the debt-encumbered Pitti family, rivals of the Medici clan. She had the palace remodeled and enlarged. The façade grew to over 670 feet in length, becoming the grandest of the Renaissance palaces and the seat of the Medici dynasty for the next 200 years.

View of the Corridor crossing atop the Ponte Vecchio

Eleonora moved her family out of the city hall, thus forcing Cosimo to commute almost half a mile through the city streets to the government offices. A man with many enemies and one who did not mix well with the general public, Cosimo had to travel with a contingent of bodyguards. Each day they had to traverse a narrow chaotic bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, which in the 1500’s was lined with malodorous tanneries and butcher shops.

Using the occasion of his son Francesco’s 1565 wedding to Joanna of Austria as an excuse, Cosimo commissioned his architect Giorgio Vasari to design an above-ground walkway from his home to the offices. Vasari, a true man of the Renaissance – architect, painter, author and art historian – took only six months to design and direct the building of the Corridor. Cosimo did not own all of the property between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Palazzo Pitti. Vasari thus had to get permission to build the Corridor through other people’s towers, mansions and businesses. When the Mannelli family refused permission for the corridor to pass through their tower, situated at the south end of the Ponte Vecchio, Vasari designed the passageway to be built around, but attached to, il torre dei Mannelli.

Spy windows allow the dukes to see out without being seen

Cosimo claimed that the architectural wonder was for the amazement of the wedding guests and to remind the citizens of Florence of his power and authority, but he also gained an escape route from either home or office and a way to spy on the Florentines from above many of the busiest thoroughfares. The Corridor was also eventually used as a nursery for many generations of Medici children; and the elderly, infirm and lazy could be wheeled through the corridor in basket chairs. Apparently, however, the stench of the Ponte Vecchio remained a problem because in 1594, Cosimo’s son Fernando decreed that the butchers and tanners would be ousted and replaced by gold- and silversmiths.

The Tour

The Percorso del Principe Tour begins in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio. It always numbers less than 20 participants and lasts about two hours. The tour group meets in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, proceeds to the Hall of the Five Hundred, Il Salone dei Cinquecento, where an Italian-speaking guide presents a short history lesson regarding the Medici, the Palazzo Vecchio and the Vasari Corridor.

The itinerary includes parts of the Palazzo Vecchio Museum. Each group is escorted through a number of governmental chambers to Eleonora’s Green Room, La Camera Verde, in the former Medici family apartments on the second floor. From there the group crosses a short sky bridge, part of the original Corridor, over Via della Ninna, and enters the east wing of the Uffizi Gallery. Tour participants have a chance to examine only the east hallway of the Uffizi – the ticket does not allow for free re-entry into the Gallery that holds the largest collection of Italian medieval and Renaissance art in the world.

The main branch of the Vasari Corridor is entered via a doorway located at the beginning of the west corridor of the Uffizi. The passage drops down a long stairway flanked by paintings from the Medici collection and then traverses the top of the arcade on the north bank of the Arno, turns right over the shops on the Ponte Vecchio, and continues on through to the Boboli Gardens of the Palazzo Pitti. Visitors exit into the garden and can remain there for the rest of the day.

Arno River seen from Mussolini's windows

Small windows all along the Corridor provide excellent views of the river and the city. The best view is in the center of the Ponte Vecchio through two large sets of windows that look west down the Arno. These windows were not part on the original design, but were installed at the direction of Mussolini during World War II because Hitler and Mussolini wanted to look at the view while they held private meetings in the Corridor.

German dynamite damaged the Vasari Corridor

By some reports, Hitler’s fondness for the Corridor and the Ponte Vecchio spared both when the retreating Germans blew up all of the other bridges crossing the Arno as the Allies advanced on Florence in August 1944. The Corridor, however, was damaged by the dynamite set at the ends of the Ponte Vecchio to block passage over the Old Bridge.

Near the south bank of the river, the Corridor passes through the interior of the church of Santa Felicita. A Corridor window looks over the gray and white pietra serena interior of the chapel, and a door enters a high rear balcony, similar to an exclusive box at the opera, where the Medici family attended services in comfort and privacy.

The Medici's balcony inside Santa Felicita

Past the church, the tour ends in the Boboli Gardens, next to the elaborate grotto designed by Bountalenti in the 1580s. At the end of the tour, participants may remain in the massive Giordino di Boboli to explore its many acres of walkways and gardens. Laid out for Eleonora di Toledo by Niccolo Tribolo in 1550, it is one of the finest examples of an Italianate landscape design.

The Collection of Paintings and Portraits

The paintings in the Corridor are arranged in three major groups.

The first collection, which starts at the doorway from the Uffizi Gallery and ends as the Corridor turns on to the Ponte Vecchio, is a group of 17th and 18th century paintings by Italian and other European artists. Acquired by the Medici clan, Cardinal Leopoldo de’Medici at his death left a collection of 730 paintings, 318 sculptures, 1,245 drawings, 589 small portraits, and thousands of medals and other objet d’arte. A small portion of his collection is displayed in the Corridor, including a number of paintings from the school of Caravaggio. Notable among the first collection are pieces by Guido Reni, Gerrit van Honthorst, Empoli, and Guercino.

The Medici collection in the Vasari Coridor

Next, as the Corridor starts across the Ponte Vecchio, there is the world’s largest collection of self-portraits, arranged chronologically, of Italian and other European artists. Cardinal Leopoldo, inspired to start the series, collected over 80 portraits in the 17th century.  The set was then augmented by earlier pieces obtained by other members of the Medici family.  Still more were added throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries by artist donation and acquisition by the Uffizi.

Only a portion of the total collection of self-portraits is hung on the Corridor walls at any one time. Those now on display include Giorgio Vasari, Titian, Correggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Velasquez, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Antonio Canova, Delacroix, John Singer Sargent, and Carlo Levi. The last displayed, but not the last to reach the Gallery, is a self-portrait donated by Marc Chagall in 1976. A fake Leonardo da Vinci is also displayed – it was part of the Medici collection, but was found by x-ray to be painted over a 17th century Magdalene.

A special gallery - rarely seen

The last group of paintings, displayed in the Corridor where it turns toward the Boboli Gardens, is a collection of Medici and Hapsburg/Lorraine family portraits, many of them of the children. These give valuable insight into the attire and mannerisms of wealthy seventeenth and eighteenth century nobility.

Uncertain Future

Few tourists get to see the inside of the Vasari Corridor. The facility is frequently closed for months at a time, and the unique construction and length of the Corridor requires that tours must be undertaken in small groups guided by Uffizi personnel. There are ongoing discussions about whether the collection in the Corridor should be taken down and tours discontinued due to security and preservation concerns. Now there are rumors of a possible years-long restoration project planned for the corridor.

Details for the 2010 Tours

In 2010 until July 7, tours are available four times on Wednesdays (9:30, 11:30, 2, & 4), two times in the morning on Thurday (9:30 & 11:30) and two times in the afternoon on Fridays (2 & 4).

Tickets to the Percorso del Principe cost 19 euro and allow you to stay in the Boboli Garden at the end of the tour.

Tours are given only in Italian, but the viewing of the Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi hallways and the Vasari Corridor is so interesting it’s worth the wait as explanations are made to Italian-speaking visitors.

Reservations should be made well in advance by calling +39 055.294.883 or through the Florence museum web site www.polomuseale.firenze.it.  (The title of the tour is Percorso del Principe and the person taking your reservation will likely not understand if you say “Vasari Corridor”.)

If you are in Florence, tickets can be bought without reservation (if available) at the ticket office on the back of Orasanmichele on Via Calzaiouli or the ticket office at the Pitti Palace.  If you make a reservation in advance, you redeem it and purchase your tickets at Door # 2 at the Uffizi Gallery.

The tour group is requested to meet 15 minutes before the tour time at the “Percorso del Principe” sign in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio

Museo di Palazzo Davanzati

The Davanzati Palace Museum is finally – after over 15 years of restoration – open to the public and is well worth a visit. An added benefit is that the madding crowds of Florence haven’t found it  - yet.

The Palace, built by the Davizzi family around mid-14th century, was purchased in 1578 by the Davanzati family and remained in their possession until 1838, when it was divided into several separate apartments, causing severe damage to the mix of Medieval and Renaissance interior design.

In 1904, it was purchased, restored to its 14th century structure, and filled with 14th to 16th century furnishings by the antique dealer Elia Volpi, who opened it to the public in 1910 as Museum of the Old Florentine House. The contents of the museum kept changing because Volpi kept selling pieces of the collection, including virtually all of the contents in a controversial auction held in New York in 1916. (Volpi was sued, thereafter, for allegedly selling a fake Rubens and a fake Van Dyck – see the 1919 NY Times article.)

Main Staircase (C. Keene)

Volpi sold the palazzo in the 1920s to two Egyptian brothers. In 1951, the Italian State purchased the empty building, restored and refurnished it and opened it once more to the public in 1956.

The Palace’s most important feature is its architectural structure, which represents a rare example of 13th century noble home, showing the transition stage from the medieval tower house to a grand Renaissance building. The original façade opened into a ground floor three-arch loggia (porch – now closed) and was used as a cantina and mercantile space. A 16th century loggia replaced the medieval battlements at the top of the building.

Courtyard Light

The interior courtyard gives access to the stone and wood staircase with rampant arches leading up to the four upper floors. There are large audience halls, dining rooms, bedrooms and agiamenti (toilets – a rarity in elegant houses of the period). All the rooms have floors in cotto and ceilings in wood. The walls of many of the rooms are decorated with frescoes and decorations that are quite popular in Florentine 13th century homes, representing curtains and coat of arms. The most beautiful rooms are the Sala dei Pappagalli (the Parrot Room) and the bedroom with scenes of the tale of the Lady of Vergi and her knight.

The present arrangement of the Museum reconstructs the setting of an old Florentine home, with furniture and household tools from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Bedrooms display ornate beds and linen chests, while the audience hall on the first floor exhibits a rare 16th century Sienese painted cabinet, a 15th centry painting showing the Game of Civettino and a marble bust of a child by Antonio Rossellino.

16th Century Cradle (C.Keene)

The kitchen on the third floor exhibits furniture and ordinary daily household items, together with working tools, like looms, warping machines and spinning wheels.

Included in a separate display is a very fine collection of lacework and samplers, ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

The only disconcerting thing about a visit to this unique museum is that you cannot count of all four floors being open on any particular day at any specific time. Your four euro ticket may give you access to all four floors (a bargain) or it may only provide you a glimpse of the ground and first floor (interesting, but perhaps not worth the price).  It may help to ask before you buy your ticket. It may not.

The Parrot Room

Palazzo Davanzati

Address:  Via Porta Rossa 13 – Firenze – Tel. 055 2388610

Hours: Weekdays: 8.15 am – 1.50 pm; open second and fourth Monday of the month.

Holidays: 8.15 – 1.50 pm – open first, third and fifth Sunday of the month.

Closed on: the second and fourth Sunday of the month; the first, third and fifth Monday of every month. December 25, January 1, May 1

Entrance: 3 euro

Tuscan Traveler took a brief sojourn in Venice with a very short wish list. The first priority was to eat as much great seafood as possible. That done, the search was on for the glass menagerie that includes tiny hand-made mosquitoes.

Tiger Mosquitoes by Bruno Amadi

Bruno Amadi presides over a zoological garden of fragile plants, animals, fish, birds and frogs in a narrow back ally near the San Polo church. But the bugs are the best – a house fly so life-like you will want to swat it, mosquitoes balancing on spindly legs thinner than a human hair, and beetles in iridescent colors.

Mr. Amadi works with glass rods (lumi) and a flame to create his masterpieces. He first consults reference books and the National Geographic Magazine to assure that his creations are true to life. He will spend hours getting the spots on a Poison Dart Frog just right.

A Grasshopper Eyes a Sweet Pea Lunch

Venice is full of glass, but after you see the work of Bruno Amadi and almost pick up one of his pea pods to savor the spring sweetness, you will never be satisfied with fake ladybugs and seahorses seen in windows around every other corner.

Lume di Amadi

Address:  San Polo 2747, 30100 Venezia (Vaporetto Stop: San Sivestro)

Telephone:  +39 041.38.089

Hours: Mon. – Sat. 9am – 12:30pm, 3pm – 6pm (wise to call ahead)

Through a small ally the grand Piazza del Duomo, about half way along the south side of the cathedral, there  is a little square, Piazza del Capitolo, at one time known as Corte dei Visdomini for the noble family whose tower still stands near by. The Capitolo was (and is today) the Chapter of the Florence Duomo and has governed the actions of the priests, canons, provosts and other dignitaries of the cathedral and its predecessor church, Santa Reparata, since the before the 8th century.  Some say the Chapter goes back to Bishop Saint Zanobius in the 5th century.

Façade of San Piero Ciel D'oro - Inside the Capitolo Library

In the tiny square there was an ancient parish church called San Piero Ciel D’oro, dating from the 8th century – long before the cathedral was conceived. After the building of the Duomo, the parish church was turned into a place of study. It was by decree of Pope Nicholas V (15th century) that Archbishop Saint Antonius Pierozzi created one of the first “public” libraries in Florence and placed it under the control of the Cathedral Chapter.

Illuminated manuscript from the 14th century

“This house of wisdom” as it is called in a Latin inscription over the doorway was used for meetings of the Cathedral Chapter and served as the Chapter’s archive. Documents show that the Chapter was very active in city government and in the powerful artistic and business guilds that virtually controlled Florence throughout the Renaissance.

Over 300 years old - archival books wait on open shelves

The hegemony exercised by the Florentine upper classes on canonical appointments is clear in the frequent recurrence of noble family names such as Medici, Strozzi, Corsini and Albizi. Giovanni de’Medici (later Pope Leo X), was a member of the Cathedral Chapter.

A plaque in Latin, higher on the façade, recalls the visit to the Cathedral Chapter of Pope Pius VII, on June 1st 1815, on his way to Genoa to negotiate peace in Italy.

Today, the library contains 5, 500 books printed after 1500 and 85 manuscripts from earlier centuries. Most of the original books and documents have since been relocated. The library books first went to the Opera del Duomo and then, in 1778, the collection of many of the early manuscripts were transferred to the Laurentian Library and the printed volumes (post 1500) went to the Magliabechiana Library (now the National Library).

Dramatic sky fresco arches over the library reading room

The library is used for research on religious and historical subjects. Letters of request and reference must be presented to use the facility.

Eye of Providence at the center of the ceiling fresco

But for the lucky few who are granted access, they will sit under a frescoed sky, watched by the all-seeing Eye of Providence.

The Year of Astronomy was celebrated in 2009 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s invention of the telescope. It was also a special opportunity to see the Florence Biomedical Library and its collection of first edition books published by the scientist, including the volume that brought him before the Inquisition.

Exhibition of Galileo First Editions at Florence's Biomedical Library

The Biblioteca Biomedica is located in the Careggi Hospital complex. Galileo’s books came to the library from the collection stored at the ancient (built in 1288, but still in use) Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, located near the Duomo. It was a bit disconcerting to realize that over a million dollars worth of books and manuscripts were on such casual (though securely locked) display.

Galileo writes the handbook for his calculating compass

The oldest book I saw was the Operazioni del compasso. Written in Galileo’s workshop in Padua and printed in Bologna in 1609. Only 60 copies were printed. (One was just sold at auction for over $500,000.) Galileo may have issued the Operazioni del compasso in order to establish his sole priority as the inventor of the “geometrical and military compass,” a calculating and observation device that he had begun manufacturing in 1597. It was a mathematical device – a sort of calculating ruler based on the principle of proportional magnitudes – that brought speed and accuracy to computations about armaments and their trajectories. Galileo’s compass remained unsurpassed until the advent of the slide rule in the mid-nineteenth century. His pamphlet is the first published work on an analogue calculator. The success and popularity of Galileo’s instrument naturally made it attractive to imitators, and Galileo deliberately omitted any illustration of the compass in his treatise as a deterrent to unauthorized copying.

Discoursing with the Pisans over water displacement and other ideas

Galileo’s important (and unendingly titled) treatise on hydrostatics, Discorso al serenissimo Don Cosimo Il Gran Duca di Toscana intorno alle cose, che stanno in su l’acqua, o che in quella si muovono (“Discourse to the Serene Don Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Concerning the Natation of Bodies Upon, Submersion in, the Water”). Written in 1612, the “Discourse” constituted Galileo’s first direct attack on Aristotelian science. Written in the context of an ongoing dispute on the nature of buoyancy between Galileo and a group of pro-Aristotelian Pisan professors, the Discourse on Bodies in Water represented an attempt by Galileo to transfer the dispute from a narrowly focused to a more general and systematic approach. In it Galileo refuted the Aristotelian view that a solid body’s ability to float is a function of its shape, demonstrating instead the truth of the Archimedean principle that flotation depends on the relative densities of the floating body and the fluid.

Galileo in dialogue with Copernicus and Ptolemy

“DIALOGO”, now known as the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo), written by Galileo in 1632, compared the Copernican system with the traditional Ptolemaic system. In the Copernican system the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun, while in the Ptolemaic system everything in the Universe circles around the Earth. The first edition at the Biomedical Library has a beautiful woodcut frontispiece of Galileo, Copernicus and Ptolomy discussing the universe. This was the book that, in part, led to Galileo’s Inquisition trial and subsequent excommunication by the Pope.

Galileo’s formal use of the term and title Dialogo allowed him to explore his Copernican theories fully within the rubric of the “equal and impartial discussion” required by Pope Urban VIII, thus getting around the initial scrutiny of the Inquisition, which, in fact, granted it a formal license to be printed, believing it to be a book discussing tides, not knowing that the subtitle would reference “two chief world systems”. (The name by which the work is now known is extracted from the subtitle.) The book was dedicated to Galileo’s patron, Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and was a bestseller.  The fact that so many copies went into circulation throughout Europe was its salvation because within a year Galileo was convicted of “grave suspicion of heresy”, and the Dialogo was then placed on the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books, from which it was not removed until 1835.

Biblioteca Biomedica

Viale Morgagni, 85 · 50124 Florence
Tel. 055.4598055, Fax 055.4221649

Director: Dr. Laura Vannucci

The most Anglo American-styled library in Florence, the Harold Acton Library, is owned and operated by the British Institute of Florence. Contained on 2 ½ book-lined floors, the library allows full access to the stacks and provides knowledgeable assistance to the collection and extensive archives. The full catalogue is computerized and is available on-line. The Acton library contains the largest collection of English-language books in Italy.

Books line the main conference room used for the Wednesday evening lectures

There is a reading room, furnished with ancient over-stuffed couches and chairs, where both English and Italian newspapers and a variety of literary, economic, news and travel magazines completely cover the coffee table. Computers are available to use for a fee, but it is rumored that free wi-fi may be offered in the future.

Views of the Arno and Florentine palazzos

The British Institute of Florence, established in 1917, granted a Royal Charter in 1923, was the first of the post-colonial British cultural institutes to operate overseas. The Institute’s objectives are “to promote understanding between the citizens of Italy and the countries of the British Commonwealth through the maintenance in Florence of a library illustrating Italian and British culture and the promotion of the study of both the English and Italian language and the cultures of both countries.”

The library, with its panoramic views of the Arno River, was born from dozens of small donated collections and has matured into the present compilation of over 50,000 volumes published between the 16th and 21st centuries. About 500 new titles are added each year.

The collection has a strong emphasis in history of art, English and Italian literature and language, history, travel, the Grand Tour (mostly undertaken by Brits and Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries), and music. The library has a couple of thousand literary novels by both American and British authors, mostly from the first half of the 20th century, enough to keep an expat busy catching up on a must-read list of the likes of Wharton, Austen, Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

A mix of the old and the new.

The library was named after Harold Acton. Harold’s father, Arthur Acton, well-bred, but poor, was from Shropshire. His mother, Hortense Lenore Mitchell, was a banking heiress from Chicago. When Hortense married Arthur in 1903 they moved into the Villa La Pietra on the via Bolognese in Florence – a short time later she bought it for him.

Harold Mario Mitchell Acton was born at La Pietra in 1904, and grew up in the cultured and cosmopolitan Anglo-Florentine society before the First World War. He was sent to Eton and then to Christ Church, Oxford, where his contemporaries included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly, and Brian Howard.

Harold was an active member of the British Institute. He joined the governing board in 1950 and made available his apartments in the Palazzo Lanfredini (in the Oltrarno neighborhood downstream from the Santa Trinita Bridge) for the library in 1966.

When, in 1994, Harold died, he left his portion of the Palazzo Lanfredini to the British Institute and the Villa La Pietra and its surrounding properties to New York University.

The Harold Acton Library can be visited free of charge and offers a free well-attended lecture series on most Wednesday evenings.  To check out books and use the internet, a variety of fees apply. See the website.

Address:  Lungarno Guiccardini 9

Hours:  10am to 6:30pm, Monday through Friday

Americans and Brits usually find visiting libraries in Italy both frustrating and dissatisfying. The stacks are not open, so no browsing. You usually have to deal with a surly civil servant who will tell you that you do not have the right paperwork, but even if you did have lending privileges, it will take at least two weeks to obtain the books you are requesting and then you won’t be able to remove them from the premises and there is no place to sit down.

A short walk from the Duomo

In May 2007, the Oblate Library (Biblioteca delle Oblate) opened. It is the most user-friendly library in Florence for tourists and foreign students. (Another option is the Bristish Institute Library – better for expats, graduate students and seniors.)

Cloistered calm inside the Oblate Library

The Oblate Library is a long block from the Duomo and occupies the newly restored space of a huge 13th century convent of nuns – the “oblate”. Oblate derives from the Latin for “colei che si è offerta” or “she who offered herself”.  The semi-cloistered nuns served as nurses, cleaners and cooks at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital from the time of Dante (the hospital was built by Beatrice’s father) through the 1400s when Leonardo da Vinci was examining corpses in the tunnels that ran below the convent and for over 400 years more – until 1936 – when a new convent was created near the much larger and more modern Careggi Hospital.

Magazines and newspapers outside the children's space

The convent building was sold to the City of Florence. It first became the new home of the Museum of Prehistory as well as the central city government library that was moved from the Palazzo Vecchio.  Then it was closed for years for a full restoration, which preserved the late-Medieval, early-Renaissance bones of the building while opening the warren-like space up for two libraries – one for studying and the other for lending books, DVDs and CDs.  There is also a reading room where daily newspapers and monthly magazines are available in Italian, English, French and German.

Enjoy a cappuccino at the Oblate

Computers and free WiFi are also available. Children run wild in the spacious colorful biblioteca per bambini. Parents can escape to the adjoining café with a view of the cathedral’s dome. On the second floor the museum of prehistoric artifacts has reopened and can be visited for a fee.

Views from the top floor of La Biblioteca delle Oblate

La Biblioteca delle Oblate is worth a visit just for the panorama from the top floor or the sense of quiet offered in the walled cloister, but the friendly openness will bring you back to use the reading room, to listen to music in the outside loggia (where the nuns used to hang the hospital’s linen to dry), and maybe, even to peruse the book shelves holding a small selection of English fiction available for checkout for a month at a time.

The website of the Oblate Library is not available in English.

Address:  Via dell’Oriuolo 26  Florence

Hours: Mon. (2pm to 7pm), Tues. (9am to 10pm), Wed. to Sat. (9am to 7pm), closed Sunday.

In the 16th century Medicean Villa of Castello, is one of the most important of Florence’s many libraries, the Crusca Academy (Accademia della Crusca).  The Villa of Castello, located on the northern edge of the city, with its magnificent gardens (open to the public), passed from the Medici dukes to the Lorraine dukes to the King of Italy, who gave it to the State in 1919. The villa was chosen as the permanent home of the Crusca Academy in 1966.

Lunette of Villa of Castello and its gardens by Giusto Utens (1599)

The location is fitting because the origins of the Accademia della Crusca can be traced back to the mid-16th century when a group of educated philosophers, writers and linguists, disliking the rigidity of the revered Accademia Fiorentina decided to form a new academy. Calling themselves the “brigata dei crusconi” (brigade of coarse bran), they organized cruscate – amusing meetings with trivial speeches and conversation – but which also included debates and readings of cultural value, focused on works written, not in Latin, but in Italian, especially in the Florentine vernacular.

Sheaf of wheat - another symbol of Crusca

Soon, the academy adopted the name Crusca (bran), establishing the use of the symbols related to flour and to the process of separating the flour (the good language) from the bran (the bad language), following a language model that was based on the supremacy of the Florentine “vulgar” or everyday tongue. The goal of the lexicographers was to propose language cleaned of the impurities of its usage.

They went further with the theme by deciding that all the objects and furniture of the Accademia should have names relating to grain, bran, and bread, including the personal coats of arms of the Academicians, the “pale” or wooden shovels, which were painted with a symbolic image, together with the nickname of each Academician and his chosen motto.

Contento is the nickname of one of the members of Crusca

In 1590, the “frullone” or sifter, the vessel used to separate the flour from the bran, was chosen as the symbol of the Academy, as well as the motto -“il più bel fior ne coglie” (”she gathers the fairest flower”) – taken from a verse by Petrarch.

The traditional furnishings of the Accademia della Crusca included:

1) the gerle (panniers) – ceremonial academic chairs made of an upside down breadbasket with a bread shovel skewered through it to form the backrest (the addition of the shovel is attributed to Leopoldo de’ Medici);

2) the sacchi (sacks) – lockers shaped as sacks, which each had a door and shelves inside to preserve the “farina” or flour – the statutes, regulations and other writings approved by the academic censors; and

3) the pale (shovels) – decorative painted wood paddles, each bear the academic name of its owner, the motto (a line of verse originating from the 14th century many composed by Petrarch, chosen to encapsulate the spirit of the enterprise chosen by the Academician), and an image. The iconography of the shovels has been an object of study precisely because of the metaphoric meaning of the subjects, always linked to the agricultural, domestic or culinary subjects.

'Pale' adorn the walls with 'gerle' chairs below

In the 20th century, the Accademia dedicated its energies to research activities, editorial duties and to giving advice about the Italian language, opening new paths in the fields of grammar, lexicography and philology.

Today, the Accademia della Crusca is the most important center of scientific research dedicated to the study and promotion of Italian language. Its main goal is to share historical knowledge of the Italian language and its ongoing evolution in the contemporary world, in Italian society (especially in the schools), and abroad.

A 'pala' showing the process of distillation

The Academy pursues its own editorial activity, and allows public access to a specialist library and the archives; it also maintains international contacts with similar institutions, organizes meetings, seminars and conventions on the Italian language; and it has an active role in the field of European linguistic policy. The Crusca Academy offers a linguistic advice service to the public and preserves a rich collection of artistic portraits, painting, frescos, and objects, such as the famous pale.

The Accademia della Crusca is located in Florence, at the Villa of Castello, Via di Castello, 46. Its website, accademiadellacrusca.it, contains all relevant information in English as well as in Italian. For information about entry into the gardens, see the website of the State museums.

Of all of the Musei del Cibo (Museums of Food) in Italy, there are probably more dedicated to olives and olive oil than any other (except, perhaps, wine). Tuscany has the best olive oil (according to this writer), so it is a decided disappointment that the region has only one measly museum (and perhaps another, rumored to be in Carmignano) dedicated to the golden-green oil.

As the new 2009 extra virgin cold press Italian olive oil is released to the impatient masses, the following is a survey of some – but not all – of the Musei dell’Olio d’Oliva.

TUSCANY

Museo dell’Antica Grancia di Serre

The Museum of the Ancient Serre Grange is housed in a grange (fortified farm) situated in the Sienese countryside. Its fortification, which served to safeguard the stores from incursions, represents an interesting architectural type. In 2001, the museum  was inaugurated, divided into two sections, the Olive Oil Museum and the Grange Documentation Center. The first of these museums, housed in an ancient frantoio (olive-mill), displays a collection of implements and materials from the early 20th century pertinent to olive-growing and the production of olive oil.

Address: Via dell’Antica Grancia 3, Rapolano Terme, Serre di Rapolano (SI)

There is no museum website, but it is described in the website of the Florence History of Science Museum.

LIGURIA

Museo dell’ Olivo – Fratelli Carli Possibly the most interesting and complete of all of the Italian olive oil museums, the Olive Museum in Onelia was established to house a variety of objects collected over decades by the Carli olive oil company, founded in 1911. Housed in a small Art Nouveau mansion (1920), which was the company’s headquarters, it is still surrounded by the olive-oil factory. The same building accommodates a library dedicated to the olive and olive oil, while a cafeteria and a museum shop are in an adjacent building. The collection includes several rare objects, antiques and archaeological finds. All the exhibits tell the story of the customs, costumes, tools, production methods, commerce, without omitting the philosophical and artistic – the olive tree has inspired poets, authors and painters for more than a thousand years. The Olive Museum received the European Museum of the Year Award for 1993.

Address: Via Garessio 13, 
18100 Oneglia (IM)

Official Website (occasionally out of order)

UMBRIA

Museo della Civiltà dell’ Olivo

The Museum of the Olive Culture, the first public museum of its kind in Italy and in Europe, is housed in an old Franciscan monastery, which also includes the church of St Francis and a collection of works of arts. Divided into four sections (”Botany”, “Getting to know the olive and olive oil”, “The olive as a symbol of peace”, “The history of the olive”) the museum utilizes multi-media to tell its story. The Ro Marcerano** sketches amuse and educate children. The texts presenting the olive in history, botany and agronomy complement corresponding tables with data from the National Research Center. Interactive devices provide information on pressing techniques, while documentary films show such details as the manufacture of the sacks made of goat hair in which the crushed olive mush is placed for compression, and the phases of high-density cultivation, including tree pruning.

Address: Musei di San Francesco, Chiesa di San Francesco, 06039 Trevi (PG)

The official website has no information about opening times or ticket prices.

Museo dell’ Olivo e dell’ Olio – Fondazione Lungarotti

The Museum of Olive and Olive Oil was established in 2000 by the Lungarotti Foundation in a small nucleus of Medieval residences, where many decades ago an olive press operated in Torgiano’s historic center. The museum is organized in ten rooms and the tour starts with information about the phytological characteristics of the olive, the varieties grown in Umbria, and the various methods for olive cultivation and olive oil extraction, from the traditional to ultra-modern techniques. The presence of the olive and olive oil in daily life, and their use and importance throughout the centuries are also explored. These exhibits examine the mythological origin of the plant and the use of olive oil for lighting, in rituals of major western religions. The role of olive oil in medicine and in the diet, in sports, in cosmetics, for heating are described.  Finanly, popular beliefs attributed to the tree and its product – symbolic, appeasing, deterrent and therapeutic – are explored.

Address: Via Garibaldi, 10 
06089 Torgiano (Perugia)

Official Website and another claiming the museum as one of the attributes of Bella Umbria.

Frantoio Bartolomei Olive Oil Museum

The Vecchio Frantoio Bartolomei has an extensive collection of old machinery and vintage objects used in the cultivation of olives. The exhibition provides an itinerary that takes the visitor through the phases of the production of olive oil, from the growing of the olive trees, to the gathering of the fruit, from their processing to the storing of the golden oil. A 16th century press is one highlight of the collection.

Address:  Via Cagnano, 6 – 05020 Montecchio (Terni)

Official Website

LAZIO

Museo dell’Olio della Sabina Located in the village of Castelnuovo di Farfa, the Sabina Olive Oil Museum holds a rare collection of olive presses, which attest the evolution of olive oil production in the region over the course of four centuries. The museum is unique in its use of the works of five internationally renowned artists (A. Cavaliere, G. Gazzola, M. Lai, H. Nagasawa and I. Strazza), who, with music and sculpture as their tools, explain and honor the important role played by olive oil in civilization.

Address:  Via Perelli, 7
02031 Castelnuovo di Farfa (RI)

This museum has many fans, especially in Great Britain where it has been written up in the Independent and the Telegraph.  It was also mentioned in a Slowtrav.com trip report.

VENETO

Museo dell’Olio – Oleifico Cisano del Garda The Olive Oil Museum at Cisano of Bardolino, near Lake Garda, was established by the Cisano del Garda Oil Mill, which has been operating since 1936. The museum’s most important exhibits include an ancient olive-press with a lever, grindstones, screw presses and the reconstruction of a 19th century hydraulic press, as well as a centrifugal separator from the 1930s and various containers used to store the final product, including the characteristic stone jars of the Garda-Verona region.

Address: Via Peschiera, 54
37011 Cisano di Bardolino (VR)

Official Website with virtual tour. Military families from the nearby U.S. base include this museum in their visits to Lake Garda as reported in the Stars & Stripes.

PUGLIA

Museo dell’ Olio di Oliva Sant’ Angelo de Graecis

Created in the 400-year-old building that housed the olive press of the Sant’ Angelo de Graecis estate, the Museum of Olive Oil includes a collection of machinery and equipment attesting the history of olive oil production from the late 17th century until the early 1900s.

Address: Contrada S. Angelo, 5
72015 Fasano (Br)

There is no official website, but it is mentioned in a travel site and the details of the museum’s hours are on the Fasano website.

ABRUZZO

The Museum of Olive Oil of Cantinarte

Located in the small village of Bucchianico near Chieti, the Olive Oil Museum offers a view of olive oil production as practiced in the 18th century using stone and wood machines powered by man and donkey. The museum is housed in an ancient frantoio where the interior spaces and architectural details have been restored with special care to authentic detail.

Address: Via San Camillo 21, 66011 Bucchianico

Official Website and the website  Abruzzo Today describes the museum.

Museo dell’ Olio di Loreto Aprutino

The small Abruzzo hill town of  Loreto Aprutino has five – yes, five – museums. One is all about olive oil. It is housed in the New Gothic-stlye castle, itself worthy of a visit. A 90 minute guided tour is included in the 6 euro ticket price.

Address: Via C. Battisti, 65014 Loreto Aprutino (PE)

Official Website and bloggers About Abruzzo and Life in Abruzzo describe the olive oil museum and the castle.

All About Olive Oil Museums

For information about Olive Oil Museums anywhere in the Mediterranean check out the Olive Oil Museums site.

Best Photo of Olive Oil

National Geographic’s Photo of the Day – Olive Oil: Elixir of the Gods

Next time:  Museo del Gusto – the Taste Museum

Only death or divorce will get you a spot in the coveted first row on an Italian beach. In a country where there is a socialistic equality in most things – health care, long lines at the post office, job security, good food – the beach is not one of them. In the U.S., if you get up early enough, you can stake out the best piece of sand on almost any shore and you can usually have a couple of yards between you and your nearest neighbor.

Each beach station has its own color scheme

In Italy, the best spot is already taken – everywhere.  This prime real estate is a ten foot square piece of sand on the front row (closest to the waterline) in one of the hundreds of beach stations (stabilimenti balneari or bagni) that line the sandy beach along the gently rolling Tyrrhenian Sea from Rome to Cinque Terre. It is only obtained through patience or primogeniture.

This, of course, is not the natural sea-washed, wind-ruffled, kid-pocked, littered and shell-strewn beach of the States or Britain. No, this is ten feet of perfectly groomed sand, topped by a large beach umbrella, a beach chair, two matching sling-back chairs and a long lounge with attached sun-shade.

Chairs for five under the umbrella

It’s crowded, especially after the allowable five people move into the space. It’s more crowded when the neighboring umbrellas on either side are raised and their quota of five people each arrive. But ,of course, if you have a spot on the front row, you know everyone around you – they have been friends, or even family, for decades.

It takes a lifetime to get to the front row

Each summer Italians spend as much time as possible, not only in the same seaside town, or at the same bagno, but on the same spot of sand, the same distance from the same sea.  They frequently rent the spot for three to four months each year. When no member of the extended family is present between the months of May to mid-September, no one else is allowed to sit under their umbrella, on their chairs, or on their ten-square feet of sand.

For Americans who for the most part don’t spend the summer holidays in the same place twice, this shows an astonishing commitment or a sad lack of imagination. But this is not unusual for Italians. A recent study showed that over 70% of Italians take their 30 to 60 days of vacation each summer at the same time and over 65% spend that holiday time in the exact same place every year.

Perhaps it is the chaos of their history and politics that push Italians into a comfortable conformity in their private lives.  They have a sense of humor about it all. In the 1960s, Piero Focaccia, a popular singer, warbled this tune:

Changing cabins for rent at the beach

Per quest’anno, non cambiare.
Stessa spiaggia, stesso mare.

For this year, don’t change
Same beach, same sea.

Italy is blessed with beaches, both east on the Adriatic Sea or the west on the adjoining seas:  Ligurian, Tyrrhenian, as well as the southern Ionian Sea.  The personalities of the coasts are clearly defined.  The east coast has thousands of stabilimenti lined up at Rimini, Ancona, San Benedetto and Lido di Jesolo, south to Pescara. The sea is flat and tepid, but the beaches rock with discos and luna parks.  The west coast has more rambunctious seas, but seems to have a more placid beach life, fewer teenagers looking to hook up, more groups of three or four middle-aged ladies standing knee deep in the water gossiping. Italians are opinionated and loyal – those that favor the east coast, do not let the west coast sand slide through their toes.

Actually, there is not a lot of sand-toe contact on the Italian beaches. Once the Italian family (this is not a solitary pastime; you only go to the beach with family or friends) selects its preferred coast, picks a town to match their socio-economic class (Forte dei Marmi for high-rollers, Viareggio and Lido di Camaiore for the well-to-do, Lido di Massa Carrara for the middle class) and puts down one to five thousand euro for the sixteen summer weeks (mid-May to mid-September) at a bath station, they will have a combination of the following amenities: a parking lot, an entry portico, a receptionist (for day or weekly renters), a bar or café, showers (mostly cold, some hot for a fee), toilets, changing cabins, restaurant, fresh- or sea-water pool (higher end establishments), video games, fooseball tables, boardwalks to the sea (wood, plastic, or rubber), a bagnino (lifeguard cum umbrella jockey cum sand raker), a flag pole with colored flags (red if sea is too rough), paddle boats for rent, and a rescue rowboat for the bagnino.

Upscale stabilimento balneari provides extra space

For the American with an exaggerated sense of personal space, the Italian beach scene, although colorful, can seem claustrophobic. For the Italian it is a joyful place of friends and family – teenagers fall in love, get married ten years later, socialize and play cards with other couples, have children – who play as babies/toddlers/teenagers, and then fall in love and start the cycle all over again.

As the summer ends and the ombrelloni are put away, Italians say goodbye to their beach mates with promises of “Stessa spiaggia, stesso mare” next year.