Oltrarno

Hi everyone!

Today’s post will be full of pictures from Oltrarno, a residential neighborhood across the Arno river from the main part of Florence with palaces and cathedrals.  We took a walk around this neighborhood before visiting the Pitti Palace and Boboli gardens, where the important Medici family eventually lived.

Oltrarno is known for its artisans and quaint roads.

Some workers….

Fruit from a local market.

We got some strawberries and they were really yummy!

A side street.

 

Flowers in a window box.

A scooter.

What do you think? Did you like this photo+caption post?

Thanks for reading!

 

Florence’s Duomo

Hi everyone!

So today I’m posting pictures of Florence’s Duomo, which is Florence’s main Cathedral.  I’ll be doing a series of posts on Florence! I can’t wait to show some of my two thousand photos with you guys! (yes, I did say two thousand :-))

This is the outside of the Duomo.  The Duomo has four main buildings; the cathedral, the baptistry (octagonal building in the front), bell tower, and a museum called the Opera del Duomo.  The first three are in this picture.

The all three have a marble facade. The next one is of the cathedral.

Here’s an interesting one of all three (it does cut off the top of the bell tower).

My favorite of the Duomo sites was the bell tower.  It has the best view of the city and the dome, and it is less crowded.  There are all lots of places to stop on the way up because there are quite a few steps to climb.

Here are a few pictures from the bell tower.

The cool one above is from one of the small windows in the stairs.

The picture below is the metal case that you walk through at the top of the bell tower.

I did take some awesome landscapes but I’ll be posting them in a separate post.

The inside of the Cathedral is unimpressive except for the huge fresco on the inside of the dome. The picture was taken from a balcony as I walked up the dome.  I really like the figures at the top that look like they are coming out of their niches.

The climb up the dome was really cool! There were a ton of long spiral staircases that made me feel like I was in a medieval castle!

I didn’t think it was scary because I’ve been up to the top of St. Paul’s in London, which was much scarier (the top was really narrow and the rail was low!)

This picture is from the top of the Dome looking down! One of the best parts of the dome was waving down to part of my family that didn’t go up!

The drop was really steep.

There are really neat arches at the top.

I really like the red terracotta tiled rooves.

The baptistry was neat but I don’t really like many of my pictures.  The mosaics on the ceiling are in the byzantine style and very two dimensional.

Here are a few pictures from my way down.

This is a pipe from the walls.  I’m experimenting with black and white… not sure how it turned out.

The museum was worth it especially because they have both of Ghiberti’s doors, which are from the early 1400’s and went on the baptistry.  Many people say the doors ‘opened’ the era of the Renaissance.

These were his first ones.

And these are his gates of paradise. (sorry for the weird bending illusion! They are flat doors in truth.)

Here is a picture of the Duomo from far away.  I took the picture from the top of Palazzo Vecchio.

And that concludes my Duomo post! What did you think? Have you been to the Duomo? Which picture was your favorite?

Thanks for reading!