16 Oct.08--more Florence

Ponte Vecchio from further along the Arno.
David outside the Palazzo Vecchio. He's a copy of the one in the museum.
Walkway between the two parts of the Uffizi, built so the Medici honchos would not get wet in the rain or be closer to assassins.
The steps of the Uffizi are great. They're the stoop of the Western World. There are always many people from all over the world, street performers, and poor illegal immigrants trying to sell cheap stuff until the authorities show up.
Of course, there is a lot of the most famous art in the world inside the museum, but I enjoyed the outside even more.
I did spend a lot of time in the Botticelli room. Another highlight is the portrait by Rosalba Carierra, a pastel which, being a pastel, has less color degradation than many of the oil paintings.

Florence just does have something about it that lets you know that, yes, here was born modern thought, modern banking, modern commerce, if you define modern as post-medieval, classical revival, precursor to neo-classical, 18th C. thought--another recycling yet of greco-roman thought.

If you're interested in the ying-yang forces of thought that tug one another in Western civ., I recommend reading Matthew Arnold's essay on Hebraism and Hellenism. It does a good job of explaining these contrasting outlooks on the world and how their tug-of-war has caused the differing philosophical outlooks in different eras of West. civ.

Even Florence had its brief period of uptight conservatism with Savonarola, an extremist, no-fun monk, who became influential talking about the sinfulness of others but soon got his comeuppance at the stake. Liberal/conservative, tory/whig, republican/democrat--plus ca change...