I was just going through the tumblr blog for Florence Journal and realized I had become a complete sunset junkie - there are two pages of pics here.
Here's one - I would love to hear some comments!
I was just going through the tumblr blog for Florence Journal and realized I had become a complete sunset junkie - there are two pages of pics here.
Here's one - I would love to hear some comments!
This was yesterday:
The Basilica of San Miniato al Monte is one of the oldest churches in Florence and is frequently called the finest Romanesque basilica in all of Italy. The church as we know it today was started around 1018 and took over one hundred years to complete.
St. Minias was possibly from Armenia and believed to have been martyred around 250 (he was beheaded during the anti-Christian persecutions of the Emperor Decius and was said to have picked up his head, crossed the Arno and walked up the hill of Mons Fiorentinus to his hermitage and buried on this hillside). The church is in a wonderful state of preservation and there are several important works inside, including a tabernacle attributed to Rossellino, the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal with works by Rossellino, Della Robbia and others, frescoes by Agnolo Gaddi, and an amazing fresco cycle of the life of St. Benedict by Spinello Aretino, to name just some of them.
If you have more than a couple of days in Florence, this is must do for some fresh air, the views, and the amazing church. Click the image below for a slide show of San Miniato:
We were bike riding in the Cascine a couple of weeks ago, and I heard this distinct, loud bird call. I looked up and thought I saw a parrot - and I think I did, I did, I did see a (wild?) parrot high in a tree. I didn't have tripod but I did have my long lens so I snapped away.
This is the best shot I got. I also did some research, and it appears that there are wild (or feral) parrots in Europe (see here), and in places much colder and further north than Florence.
Here are some neat photos a friend sent to us, taken in 1972, when he was stationed in Germany. Nothing much has changed it seems, but these pictures have a great feel.
The day after - last year I went up to the Piazzale Michelangelo for pictures. This year, since we just moved to other end of town, I just walked into the center for some photos. Here is the Duomo:
More from today on Florence-On-Line.
Got a bunch of photos of the snowstorm today, there is an album of them on Florence On Line: Florence Snowstorm. Hopefully there will be some snow left tomorrow morning and I can get some more shots, and I will be posting more from today too as soon as I can.
It was crazy out there - cars and buses abandoned everywhere, the trains stopped running, phones were down in various parts of town. It seemed to snow about 6 to 8 inches or more before a freezing rain started, and then around 9 PM it stopped. We saw a truck slide coming off the Ponte Santa Trinita and crash into a row of parked Vespas.
We just put up an album of favorite photos on flickr - check it out when you get a chance.
Here is a new and updated "best of Florence" set of photos (on our Facebook page).
Finally got around to adding a "scrapbook" today. This is something I had been planning since we first got to Florence, a place to post things like ticket stubs, official documents, fliers, etc. (instead of saving them all in a book or journal like I did when I was younger). Now curious travelers and expatriates in planning can see what some of these things actually look like: Permesso di Soggiorno, Codice Fiscale, etc.
We just added a photo album for the Cathedral - Basilica of Santa Croce (exterior shots). This cathedral of course is on the Piazza Santa Croce here in Florence. It is an old Franciscan church (circa 1294, possibly by Arnolfo di Cambio) and one of the most storied buildings in art history. For more about the church itself see our earlier post here.