From June 15 to 24, Florence will host the traditional Calcio Storico Fiorentino.

Four teams, representing the city’s four main districts, will compete in Santa Croce square.

Players will wear uniforms dating back to the 16th century and make their entrance onto the playing field in spectacular fashion in the Historical Parade of the Florentine Republic along with 500 people.

The final game will be held on June 24 when Florence celebrates the feast day of St. John, the city’s patron saint, with parades, special events and fireworks.

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There is no doubt that anyone coming to Italy is fascinated by art (60% of the world’s artistic heritage is in Italy) and by the beauty and diversity of nature (in short distance you can have mountains, hills and sea). But nobody misses the opportunity to taste our food, finally in the original version.

Food in Italy is not only and simply nourishment, it is a fundamental aspect of our culture. Perhaps it has got so many variations, so many colors and is made so genuine, healthy and beautifully because we give so much importance to it. It ‘s like as if food concentrated our being Italian. We have transformed a necessity into a beautiful, cosy and friendly moment of life.

Nobody in Italy cooks only to eat. 
If you want to test this, just start a conversation with any Italian on any type of food.  Well, you will see that the conversation will be long and passionate. You’ll learn why for that type of dish you absolutely need those particular onions and that if you really want them to be the best, then you have to go to that shop because the owner personally knows the farmer that produce them.
Anyone in Italy you can tell you that pasta with tomato sauce tastes better if done with San Marzano tomatoes because they give that special flavor to the dish and they can tell you exactly when basil has to be added so to keep intact its smell and taste .. Food is an amazing topic of conversation! 

Food is also a social event because it is the moment when the family gets together. So even if the hectic modern life obliges us to have lunch outside the house (at bars, restaurants, canteens, eating a sandwich in the street …) dinner is still sacred. You have to be home by that time, you’re presence is requested! The Italian table is always well laid, with many courses and change of dishes each time: first and second course, vegetables and fruit or dessert. Normally, every day (with several variations of course but basically this way) .
The table has to be beautiful, well presented and also food must be beautiful and well presented  (it is taken for granted that it tastes good).
If it is beautiful you’re happier and you enjoy your food more.
No coincidence that Italian say: “The eye also wants its part”.

Have you ever asked yourself why hotels are classified with the stars?
Who invented this system (now widely known and accepted) to enable us to understand fairly easily and quite immediately what kind of structure there is in front of us?

The origin of this symbol is ancient and brings us back to medieval Florence. “Hotels” arised spontaneously because they were in strategic locations for business and trade. They had convenient location for the travellers or they were close to places of particular importance in a city. The “hotel” not only offered shelter for the night to the people and to their animals (the barn, the garage of the time was then, as it is now, of foundamental importance) but also had a “restaurant” where hot meals were provided after a tiring and sometimes difficult journey.

Florence was ruled from the mid 1200 by the ARTI (sort of trade unions) and in the city one of the 14 minor Arti was the Hotel Arte.
Since 1300 there was even a specific regulation on the hospitality for the city of Florence and the countryside. It contained a set of rules that covered both the relationships between the different categories and the behavior to have with customers, with the intention of offering an image of order and decorum. Do you know which was the symbol of the Hotel Arte, the symbol that you could find on every house that offered such professional and friendly hospitality? A star.

How do you line up in Italy?
First of all we must understand what we mean with the word “coda” (translation for line/queue).

“Coda” in Italian refers to the tail of the animal and therefore by definition something that moves here and there. Something that is not static, straight and perfect as “the line” of the Anglo Saxon world.

Visually, the Italian queue is chaotically beautiful because it is not clear where it starts nor where it ends and so the only way to understand when your turn is, is to raise a little your voice and ask: “Who is the last one?”.

Once understood, check everybody else around you and only then follow what the person that said “I am” does: your position has to be firmly maintained because there is always somebody that trys to fit in.

Experiencing the “coda” is a unique Italian experience, that I suggest everybody to give a try.

I am talking about the queues that Italians do and not the ones you can find by museum (where there are only foreigners). I am talking about hospital’, bakery’s, post office’s queues…
When in line Italian gossip or better they communicate. It is inconceivable for an Italian to stay quiet, to sit in complete silence for 10 minutes: how boring!

It is necessary to say something, talk about anything: illnesses, the phenomenal medicine, children, politics, government….

In short, the queue is a great place to understand what Italians think important for them and Italy.

The longer you wait, the greater is the opportunity to participate to the most interesting conversations. This way you make sure and will understand that standing in the “coda” is much more fun than simply wait for your turn.

Among the treasures of Florence there is certainly the Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, the big mansion that Michelozzo was building for Cosimo the Elder since 1444.
The chapel is by definition a private, devotional space, that here the Medici family created around 1459.

The scene represents the Cavalcade of the Three Kings that is to say the procession that the Magi did to go to worship the newborn Jesus.
In reality the scene represents the political success of the Medici during the Council of Florence in 1439.
Having a council was an advertising campaign of a very high level that could today be compared with echo and shine only with being the seat of the Olympics.
In addition, this council was particularly important because it should have brought together the representatives of the East (the Patriarch) and the Western Church (the Pope).
Cosimo played his cards very well and managed to convince the participants that Ferrara had unhealthy air (the council was originally to take place there) and he invited everybody to Florence, at his complete expense.

10 years after Benozzo Gozzoli celebrated for the Medici on the walls of their chapel, the days of that council. The frescoes completely cover the walls of the chapel, you dive into them. You have the impression to admire an uninterrupted parade and watching carefully you recognize many people including the Medici (Cosimo, Piero, Lorenzo, Giuliano), the Lord of Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta and of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and among them all the Emperor of Byzantium, John Palaeologusand the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Joseph. But what is especially noticeable is the richness and exoticism of Byzantine dignitaries who so impressed the Florentines that saw them lavishly dressed, wearing turbans and having long beards going through their city on their way to Santa Maria Novella, seat of the Council.

They had met both to find an agreement about whom should be head of the church, but especially because Constantinople was asking for help from the Pope against the Turks. The Council of Florence was not a success because the church stayed divided into West and East and especially because the Eastern Roman Empire was conquered by the Turks in 1453.

Only for Florence it was a success because the council made the city famous abroad and because the Florentine got to see unknown, exotic, different worlds. From this council we still have two things left, that are now very typically and eagerly Florentine: Arista and Vin Santo!

Palazzo Medici Riccardi
Closed on Wednesdays.
Open dayly from 9 am till 7 pm

I met Wessel Huisman at the hotel reception. I knew he was exposing at the Florence Biennale and so I asked him how it was going.
This way we started a very pleasant and engaging conversation about art in general and contemporary art in particular.
He proposed me to come and see his paintings at the Biennale, and so I went.
What for an experience!
I work at the hotel but I am also a tour guide and when I am in front of an artwork I explain what the artist wanted to say, what he was thinking, I describe the historical period in which he lived in order to be able to find influences in his works, I describe the colors and their shades …
I am very often asked if the artist really thought about all these things when creating. I naively have always answered with a simple yes. With this visit I have realized that an artist not only thinks of all that but much, much more.

It ‘a work of creativity and of extreme precision at the same time.

In particular with Wessel we looked at his painting from the distance to catch the general scene and the “flavor” of what he had represented: a postcard from the past with these people that seem almost motionless while walking and then we looked at the painting from close to see the swirl of light and geometric shapes that wrap the same people so to focus the gaze in particular on two of them.
And finally we have drifted back again to get to see the overlap of the two plans: the promenade and the central vortex.

How beautiful!

What I love in Renaissance art is the possibility to see different, opposed aspects so to always be able to choose and have and feel conflicting emotions. I found it wonderful to see the same also here!
I was given the chance to recognize the been fast, as my life usually is, but also see the slowness characterized by a little bit of poignant melancholy of the people that are calmly walking along the river.

Wessel Huisman explained me in a passionate way his creative moment but also the technical difficulties of color balance: I do not know how many different types of white he has used, and how many coats of paint has given to reach exactly the shades of gray that he was looking for to give harmony to the painting.

In short, a masterpiece of emotions that reach you deep in your to the heart!
I invite you to go to the Biennale and discover his incredible work.

Being a dwarf in the Renaissance was certainly not easy. Abused from an early age, they were often sold to circuses to be shown to people as monsters and obliged to do the most degrading performances.
Some of them had a better life when they became members of a court and some even succeeded to become advisers of their Lord.

This is the case of Braccio di Bartolo, who became the favorite court dwarf of Cosimo I de Medici. He was given the irreverent name of Morgante, that Luigi Pulci had given to his Giant in his very famous poem.

In Florence there are 3 portraits of Morgante: a small fountain by Giambologna in the Bargello, another small fountain (called Bacchino) by Cioli in the Boboli Gardens and the double painting by Bronzino in the Uffizi.

Morgante is portrayed here completely naked and shown both sides while “bird hunting” Morgante holds in one hand an owl tied with a string that ends in the other hand while waiting. On the back of the painting, and this is on the second picture, Bronzino represents Morgante from the back while holding the result of his hunt.
The work is particular for the subject but it is for sure unique in its significance because it perfectly fits in the discussion that Benedetto Varchi introduced at the court of Cosimo I in those years about the primacy of sculpture or of painting.

Bronzino was a cultured painter (he knew all the Divine Comedy by heart) and wrote to Varchi a long essay about the virtues of carving.
Nothing is left about his ideas about painting. We can only deduct them from this painting that has 2 sides. It has thus the three-dimensionality of sculpture but in addition also the temporal dimension is represented as the before and the after the hunt. What a tribute to painting!

Finally what to say about the humor of this great painter who shows at once his intellectual ability and his playful side representing Cosimo’s jester!

Palazzo Medici is the house that Cosimo the Elder asked Michelozzo to build since 1444.
His business was going very well and so he could afford to build a house for his family, leaving his previous one that belonged to his in-laws and his wife in the Santa Croce district.

He wanted a new building, but the modern project that Filippo Brunelleschi proposed him frightened him very much. It was too much.

Brunelleschi was perfect for building the family church, the nearby San Lorenzo that Cosimo financed almost entirely by himself,  BUT he was not the one for his house.
Cosimo was an extremely intelligent man, careful not to displease anyone. He did not want to draw upon himself the envy of other Florentine families and it was easier to prefer the much quieter Michelozzo rather than the genius of Brunelleschi. Michelozzo was one of the great minds of that amazing period of time: magnificent interpreter of the rules of harmony and balance of the early Renaissance.
Palazzo Medici is the first palace built in the new way and soon became the model for all other buildings.

Here are its most important characteristics:
1. Only 3 levels, focusing on horizontal development;
2. decoration with bugnato  a type of stone that is rougher on the ground floor and gets more refined towards the top;
3. different height of floors (higher the ground floor and getting shorter towards the top);
4. public bench all around the building.
What we see today is a building that has changed over the centuries.
The large open arches that gave direct entrance to the beautiful inner courtyard have been closed as well as the narrow and steep staircase which was replaced in 1600 with a much larger, comfortable and representative one.
n 1700 the Palace was enlarged when it was bought by the Riccardi family. At that time the Medici have long lived in their other newer palace: Pitti.

The Palazzo deserves to be visited for the beautiful courtyard and for the Magi Chapel all frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli (for sure his masterpiece).

Palazzo Medici Riccardi
Open daily except Wednesday from 9.00 at 19.00
Ticket = Euro 4.00