Day 4: Museo e Cattedrale

I've been terribly indecisive about food here, and have gotten into a bad habit of wandering around, block after block, looking into shop and restaurant windows but never actually going into one until my feet and back start to hurt. Part of it is that I'm still intimidated by everything, and part is that there are just so many of them.

Lots of the big museums and things seem to be closed on Mondays, but the Museo del Duomo was open - I must've spent a good two hours wandering through it. This museum houses much of the art, sculptures, architectural structures, and relics that are no longer kept in the cathedral for whatever reason, as well as old blueprints and wooden models from the planning of the building itself. The Duomo was in construction for literally six hundred years, through the lifetimes of many architects and through multiple architectural and artistic styles, so it is very interesting to see how the plans for the building changed over time.

After the museum, I went into the Duomo - formally, la Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Cathedral of St. Mary of the Flower) - itself, which was spectacular. Unfortunately, the light was extremely low, so the few photos I have are awfully grainy and uneven.



The inside of the Duomo itself is this huge, elaborate fresco.



The Duomo was built on the ruins of a much, much older cathedral, that of Santa Reparata, which dates to the 4th or 5th century CE and was the Christian religious center of Florence up until the Middle Ages. From the Duomo, for a small fee, you can go down into the excavation of Santa Reparata, where some of the columns, mosaics, and stonework remain in situ.



Out of all of the art and beauty that I witnessed today, this was certainly the most profound.

I thought about going to the top of the Duomo, but decided to wait for a day with clearer skies (and after walking beforehand a lot less). Tomorrow, I plan to hit the Uffizi Gallery and hopefully some others as well.