Let’s talk about resistance after a conqueror takes power. Specifically let’s talk about this bendy yellow building, and what it shows us about the moment the Florentine Republic finally fell to its kleptocratic/proto-capitalist banking-fortune Medici conquerors. (Originally a Bluesky thread, part of my countdown to the release of Inventing the Renaissance) In a post last […]
Off to Italy again. This seems like a good time to share a link to a video of an illustrated talk Ada gave at the Lumen Christi institute in Chicago in February. It’s a fascinating overview of the place of San Marco in Florence, with lots of excellent pictures. It’s like an audio version of an Ex […]
The following map will help you find excellent gelato and food in Florence, guaranteeing that whether you’re hungry for a gourmet dinner, some quick pizza, or just delicious frozen treats, you’ll know exactly where to go. I will not claim that these are the only good places in Florence, nor even that (among the restaurants) […]
A quick review of the architectural centerpieces of Florence. Prices and hours may change arbitrarily (this is Italy, after all). Palazzo Vecchio (Palazzo della Signoria): The old seat of government of the Florentine Republic, later taken over as the seat of the Medici Dukes. The different parts of the building are a micro-history of Renaissance […]
Kicking off my new Travel Reviews section, a quick review of some centerpieces among the many, many, many attractions Florence offers her visitors. Please keep in mind that times and prices change constantly, so always check before you plan: Uffizi Gallery: The city’s great painting collection, housed in the offices built by Vasari for the […]
Florence is full of activities and events as well as sights and sounds and people, and if there are sometimes long silences between my entries, it is the silence of activity. This week I haven’t even had time to download Doctor Who. After describing the many festivals that flood the centro with activity, I went […]
On July 30th Florence, the Uffizi gallery, Google and numerous other Earthly powers celebrated the 500th birthday of Georgio Vasari (1511-1574). Both praising and describing Vasari are challenging, since no one could in fairness call him one of the Renaissance’s best painters, nor one of its best architects, nor even one of its best biographers. […]
Me – I’m going to stay inside all day and do work. Florence – But I’m Florence. Florence is better than work. Me – No, I’ve been here more than a week now, it’s time I wrote some Ex Urbe entries and shared some of what I’ve done so far. Florence – I have pizza… […]
As we resist those who claim diversity distorts scholarship, let’s run through the acronym & show how easy it is to find the rainbow in every era. We don’t even need to look beyond the Renaissance celebrities that are household names today! LESBIAN: Lucrezia Borgia’s last husband Alfonso d’Este appears in a lot of big […]
Time for the largest, most famous disability access ramp in the world, paired with a twist about how our feelings about a piece of history can reverse completely based, not just on the historian’s point of view, but what questions we start with. (Part of my series of posts counting down to the release of […]
"Warm, generous, and inviting," Inventing the Renaissance provides a witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the supposed Dark Ages and golden Renaissance, and exposes the terrible yet often tender reality beneath.
