After checking out a few shops on the south side of the Arno river, we wandered back to the north side to visit the Museo Scientifica. What an amazing collection of displays! An approximately 20 page printed guide in English was provided; sadly it provided only generalities, not information on specific items on display. But the artifacts themselves were amazing... with many of them being art as much as science. Unfortunately cameras were not permitted (though I was sorely tempted to bend that rule), but what we saw I can't even begin to catalog here. There were surveying instruments from the 1500s... large brass compasses, protractors, scales, and so forth, intricately carved and annotated. There were two telescopes crafted by Gallileo himself! There was a whole room full beautiful wooden of globes, with as a centerpiece a 10-foot-high sperherical device built in the early 1500s to calculate the positions of celestial bodies, consisting of numerous interlocking and interconnected geared rings ranging in diameter from two feet to almost three. And in the center... a globe of the earth – this was built before the Heliocentric view of the solar system was accepted... at least by those who commissioned the work. What else... rooms full of static electricity generators. A great display of clocks dating back to the 1500s. Displays of vintage surgical tools... and a somewhat grotesque collection of medical models illustrating just about every way a human birth can go wrong. Displays showing how renaissance scientists attacked such diverse subjects as weather, hydraulics, gravitation... and much more.
I could have spent the day there groking all that they had to offer, but we decided instead to move on and continue exploring the city. Apparently, the one Must See museum in Florence is the Ufizzi Gallery, but we decided to skip it, as we were both enjoying the outdoors and a bit Madonnaed out from yesterday. So we wandered town some more, but then decided to stop at the hotel and rest up a bit before beginning our trip to Piazzale Michaelangelo, overlooking the city.
A quick 20,000 lire cab ride took us to the top of the hill where Piazzale
Michaelangelo sits. The distance wasn't that long, but the Piazzale is
atop a pretty good hill, so we opted not to walk up. The auto road takes
a switchback route along the face of the hill, so it seemed like a longer
distance than in actual direct miles. At the top of the hill, in addition
to the vistas, is a church whose most recent construction dates to the
15th century, but supposedly was predated by earlier structure "...dating
back to the beginning of the religion." Wow.
Outside the church offers an amazing panoramic view of the city of Florence, dominated by Il Duomo, but extending at least several miles both up and down the Arno river, and north to the hills that border the city in that direction.
You can't help but feel that you could have stood in the exact same spot five hundred years ago, sipping wine with one of the lesser Medicci, and seeing essentially the same view... except for the damn Vespas. Perhaps 50 feet below the church, and along the roadside, was a parking lot and vista point, offering similar views. We lingered for a while, took some photos, and began the walk back to the hotel. Fortunately, for much of the way down the hill, a staircase exists, making it much more manageable.
After a brief rest in the hotel, we headed out again, for dinner at lI Latini – a restaurant suggested by some folks we'd met earlier, and also found in one of the books. A long wait (despite reservations), for a loud, fun place, with reasonably good food, a fair price, and plenty of wine included. We were seated with a Canadian couple (who turned out to be Jewish(!)) and had a pleasant chat over the din of the restaurant. By the time we finished up and headed back to the hotel, it was almost midnight.