My last night in Florence - for now

I have to keep this short as I have to be up at 5am tomorrow to get to the airport for the first leg of the flight home.

To tell you a little about the conference. The topic was Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History. It was fascinating and frustrating at the same time. Image collections all over the world are under threat of extinction - the Courtauld, merely one of the latest and greatest (see editorial in this month's Burlington Magazine). I have lots of notes and thoughts swirling around in my head, most of which I'll spare you. The art historians here were talking about the "materiality" of the photographs, the importance of things like labels and folders and annotations. Right.

Moving right along. I met a delightful woman on my first afternoon and she turned out to be Alta Macadam who writes the wonderful series of Blue Guides for Italy. I saw Max Marmor, thanks to whom I first heard about the conference. And Michael Roche from I Tatti came to say hello.

On the second day - which was to be a very long one - I sat and chatted with Max and finally met Diane Zorich whose name I've known for years. We both worked at Harvard in the 1980s but somehow didn't cross paths then. Alta arrived and had brought me a pad of paper to take notes on as I had been complaining about not having anything more than a tiny notebook the day before. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness! Diane and Max went off for lunch at I Tatti and just before they left Michael asked me if I wanted to come too but at that point I thought I should stay and get some calls made at lunchtime. Alta asked me to have dinner with her and her husband at their home that night which I accepted with pleasure. Missy Lemke's paper on the Clarence Kennedy materials at Harvard was very good and well received.

My dinner with Alta and her husband was a real highpoint. They have an "apartment" that is the ground floor of a fabulous old structure, maybe once an out-building of some sort, but just what I thought a country home should be. Francesco had cooked a wonderful dinner, full of interesting things, which I completely relished. We all talked and laughed and had a marvelous time. I arrived back at the hotel tired but refreshed.

This morning seemed endless, it was the last leg of the conference and we were all tired of the chairs and the over-heated room by this time. We started at nine a.m., had a coffee break at about 11am and then went on with no break until 2pm !!!!

So, don't get the idea that going to conferences is a piece of cake - NOT!

Time to stop. I'll see some of you soon. I'll finish up the Florentine account tomorrow. Ciao.

And another thing...

After the Ponte Vecchio I walked along the Arno, the sun was blazing hot (it was just noon by now) but I was feeling no pain (well, maybe a twinge or two) - Florence had worked its magic on me. So I kept going. I had one of those "ah-ha" moments when I came out from under a kind of arcade and looked back toward the Ponte Vecchio. I had read about how one of the Medicis had wanted a covered walkway from his home in the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river so that he could walk to work at the Palazzo Vecchio without mixing with the great unwashed. He commissioned one of the big name architects to build this for him. I had read about this more than once but couldn't quite picture it and then I realized I had just walked out from under it. I looked up and saw the enclosed second storey and the light dawned. Isn't it great what a liberal arts education will do for you! This walkway thing would be comparable to the President of MIT deciding he wanted to walk over to Mass General without ever crossing through traffic.

I walked past the Museo di Storio della Scienza where in Galileo's telescope as well as the bones of his right middle finger are on display. There's a message there somewhere. Getting a little weary by this time I kept going to the Piazza dei Cavalieggri and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. It is easy to see why it suffered so badly from the flood in 1966. By this time though I was afraid if I stopped I wouldn't be able to keep going so I kept on to Santa Croce where I paused to rest the feet which by this time were throbbing. The story gets less interesting from here. I was hungry and tired so I looked at the map and plotted the most direct route back to the hotel. I realized that the Duomo was about half-way between me and my hotel so I stopped for some pizza in a little place on the back side of the cathedral. With the pizza I ordered a liter of aqua minerale gazzatto - now I know how big a liter really is. I'm still drinking from that bottle and I know why the waiter seemed surprised. Feeling somewhat restored I staggered on and made it back to the room in time to clean up and change for the opening sessions of the conference which was to start at 3:00 pm (or 15:00 hrs.). So now I've shared the fun part of the day and I'm signing off for the night. Tomorrow I'll tell you a little about the conference and the wonderful evening I had tonight eating at the home of a new friend and her husband in a wonderful place about half-way up the road to Fiesole. Somebody pinch me. Tomorrow is the end of the conference and in the afternoon I'll be running around trying to see a lot more before my feet really do fall off. And then home. So stay tuned for more.

More about my first day

Lunch hour on Friday and I'm back at the hotel to rest a bit before the afternoon session. The first talk of the afternoon is in German so I'm not rushing to get back for that. It's so hard to sit still and look intelligent when you have no clue what they are saying.

So, back to yesterday. After thoroughly soaking up the atmosphere and drinking in all that green and pink and white marble, I went off in search of Via d'Orche. The Paperback Exchange is written up in several guide books and I had read an article in The Florentine the night before. So off I went. Wonderful bookstore with lots of new and used books and friendly atmosphere. I'm not saying whether I bought anything or not! Guess. From there I wondered on, heading in the general direction I thought the river would be. I turned into the Piazza della Republica and was delighted by the sight of a small bright carousel.

From there I went past Orsanmichele to the Piazza della Signoria. Wow, there they all are, the Palazzo Vecchio the Uffizi and all those statues! When you study architectural photographs, as I have done for so long, you don't have any sense (I should say I didn't anyway) of how the buildings relate to each other. In a way this is one of the important topics of the conference. In categorizing and arranging images in our collections we affect how the user interacts with them and the idea of the objects depicted as well. Would my perceptions be different if I had worked with photos of all the buildings in one piazza rather than looking at the churches, then the municipal buildings, then the museums?










At this point I realized that I was only a few longish blocks from the Arno so I decided to push on. As I walked along I could see further ahead a swarm of people on what looked like a narrow, dark street. As I got closer I realized that what I was seeing was in fact the Ponte Vecchio. I had not idea! Tiny, with the shops filled with expensive trinkets and jewels, it is a bit claustrophobic feeling (or is it me that is claustrophobic and not the bridge?) By this time it must have been almost noon, the sun was hot and not at a good angle for photos but I did stop and try to take a few views from each side of the bridge.

I'm stopping here for a break and then back to the conference. Check back for the Biblioteca Nazionale and Santa Croce.

My first day, continued

Let's see, where was I? Oh yes, the Baptistery. And then the Duomo. I was there a bit before the crowds which was nice. I walked around the whole thing, admired the Campanile, and took some photos before joining the queue to go inside. I wasn't as moved by the inside as by the outside, it is a lot plainer than you might expect, almost restrained. And all the people with their cameras and chatter didn't seem conducive to reverence. I sat on one side and contemplated for a few minutes (resting my feet for the next stage). Then I was off in search of the Paperback Exchange, a highly recommended English language bookstore, located in a small side street just beyond the Duomo.

Now let me just pause and say something about the streets here. The great thing is that in the area of the Duomo there are now whole blocks that have been designated for pedestrians only (more or less, do watch out for the bikes though). This has infuriated the cab drivers and confused almost everyone else. The trouble is you get used to strolling around in the street and then suddenly there is traffic again and you have to jump out of the way. Clearly I haven't mastered the signage, plus I seem to be expecting the traffic to behave like it does in England and Australia, that is, come at me from the wrong side. How I got this confused I don't know but I've had several near misses. The other thing is that the sidewalks are about the width of my hips. This means that people are always stepping out into the road to let others pass, or walking sideways which is also dangerous. The streets are narrow (my hips aren't) and the buildings high and so you miss a lot just getting safely from one end of the block to the other. I have to stop and look back to see what I've missed. You can't be watching the pavement to avoid disastrous falls and taking in the scenery at the same time alas.

I'm stopping here to head off to the Institut for a very full schedule of talks. Those chairs are so uncomfortable that it will be torture to keep from constant fidgeting. Will pick up the saga tonight. Looks like another beautiful day here. More later.

My first full day in Florence

Somehow I managed to get up and out this morning (discipline!) after a nice breakfast in the hotel's lovely high-ceiling-ed breakfast room (ok so I don't love continental breakfasts but this wasn't bad). Here are some images that I found on the net of the hotel - I couldn't have taken these myself. Believe me that is NOT what I had for breakfast.

I had been studying the map, planning my route. It is amazing how misleading the scale of these maps can be. I wasn't sure how far I would get but my main objective was the Baptistery and the Duomo, and the Paperback Exchange (located in a side street near the Duomo). But believe it or not I got all the way to the river, Santa Croce and back to the hotel without giving in an taking a cab. My legs are very annoyed with me and my feet haven't been speaking to me for days.

What I particularly love here is the way you turn a corner and there is a building you have read about all your life. The fact that the first one to "hit" me this morning is my all time favorite, the lovely octagonal Baptistery was a great way to start the walk. I'm going to add a couple of photos from the first part of the walk here and then stop for the night. I will pick up again in the am.

On the road again in 2009

I thought I had done my traveling early this year, and quite definitively, with the trip to Australia and New Zealand, but here I am in Florence, Italy attending a conference called "Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History." The weather here is gorgeous, warm to hot during the day and pleasantly cool at night. I traveled overnight via Paris and just made the connection to my Florence flight by minutes. Miraculously my hotel room was available when I arrived, weary and sleep deprived, at 10am local time (4am my body time). Took a short (4-hrs, oh well, I meant it to be 2 hours) nap and then went out for a little walk around the neighborhood. I only got as far as the street market beside the Basilica San Lorenzo. I thought my legs were going to give out but a quick refreshing lemon gelato revived me for the walk back to the hotel. I had a late dinner at the Ristorante Accademia in Piazza San Marco. I won't torment you with how delicious it was. Just take my word for it...it is very hard to get a bad meal here. So with all my muscles (and I use that term loosely) aching I staggered back to the hotel and to sleep.