An End to the Affair

I first went to Florence on a decidedly pedestrian bus tour in the mid-1980s. We struck it lucky with the most magical tour guide, however, an English expatriate who was besotted with Florentine art. Sadly, I don’t even remember her name, but she inspired an interest in the Renaissance I have carried with me to this day. She had a way of waxing lyrical about the paintings and statuary that was positively poetic. (Twenty five years on, and my heathen son noticed only the constant theme of male nakedness!) The Medici family patronized a gobsmacking number of illustrious local artists such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Bruneschelli and Ghiberti, their artwork filling the museums and galleries and their memorials and tombs inundating the churches.

I loved the churches. Several (the Duomo, Santa Croce) are gloriously, excessively decorated in the local grey/green, white and faded salmon marble –  is it a coincidence that these are the colours of the tricolore flag of Italy?  Yet it was often the smaller, less patronized (less expensive) churches that captured my heart. I loved the narrow cobbled streets – high heels are a safety hazard here and you become expert at dodging bicycles and mopeds – and my heart flips over at the way every building is pasted onto the next one, bumper to bumper, merging the centuries like pages in a history book: Roman, Mediaeval, Renaissance, Gothic. Heavy wooden doors and wrought iron balconies and picturesque courtyards: Shakespeare’s Italy in the flesh.

Florence is not just a city of art and architecture, it is also a city of cafés and restaurants and snack bars and gelaterias. And in the summer, it is a city of tourists. Tourists gather in bunches on the steps of Santa Croce or sunbathe on the slope in front of the Pitti Palace. They mill together aimlessly on street corners and fill the cafés. They are prepared to queue for hours in the heat to stand in front of a painting they just read about in their guide book.

Sadly, this plague of humanity that descends upon Florence from May until September has had a bad effect on the local population. Cafés and restaurants sprawl out into the street, tables and chairs balanced precariously on the pavement or in the road, welcoming every passer-by. (Our own favourite, Santo Spiriti, scatters its tables blithely among the market stalls.) Yet that is about the most enthusiastic sign of welcome you can expect. Disappointingly, Florence is a rip off of monumentally insulting proportions. Used to tourists by the busload, and knowing few will be returning, many restaurants in this idolized, once idyllic city have got into the unattractive habit of serving up mediocre meals at exorbitant prices, and furthermore, having the gall to charge extra euros for the privilege of sitting down to eat it.

I did try to hold on to my older, fonder memories of this ‘jewel of Renaissance Italy’ (thanks Lonely Planet Guide). I remember backpacking into Florence with a gang of teenage girlfriends to live for days on luscious slices of pizza dripping with mushrooms. There was a circuitous route march to find accommodation, as one of our team was convinced that senso unico meant Youth Hostel. A few years later, I giggled uncontrollably in the Piazza della Signoria when a passing pigeon pooped on my boyfriend and his gelato. He sulked for hours. Fair enough, I thought, but  it’s supposed to be good luck, and it was funny. For some reason he didn’t think so. We meandered through Sunday flea markets bubbling away in the piazzas, bells calling repetitively, from the campanile, nagging, urging everyone to mass.

So I tolerated the appalling rudeness of the local service industry for a few days, not wanting to end the affair, grabbing at straws. Sadly, by the time we had been there a week, it was over. The nicest person we had met was the English girl (a nun?) who worked in the Reception office of the old convent we were staying in. O, and a beaming and enthusiastic young green grocer who danced over to sell me a paper bag full of deeply red ripe cherries. (They gave me a chronic stomach ache, but that was my own fault for total gluttony!)

The rest of the people we came across were curt at best, and mostly just plain, old-fashioned rude. And what I really can’t bear is the way they are happy to snaffle up millions of tourist dollars and give nothing in return. It’s like blatant pick-pocketing. ‘Who cares?’ is the prevailing attitude. ‘They come anyway.’ And so I paid ten euros to visit the unkempt, overgrown, uninspiring gardens of the Pitti Palace, and spent a dismal couple of hours bemoaning the contrast between the gravel-strewn paths and unloved acreage of one of the most potentially beautiful spots in Florence with the awe-inspiring, poetically beautiful National Trust gardens in England. It became downright depressing. Heaven knows how they were spending those tourist dollars – certainly not on maintenance. Scaffolding seems to be more a measure of spite than renovation, set up to block the visionary designs of the architects from the eager eyes of the tourists.

Bill Bryson could have warned me. I just wish he’d told me sooner, and didn’t wait until after we got home. Apparently he, too, spent four days ‘wandering around Florence, trying to love it but generally failing.’ He described Florence as dusty, shabby and in need of a wash, an obstacle course covered in litter and street vendors cluttering every pavement with their wares. He concludes, and I concur, that ‘much of Florence was tawdrier than any city so beautiful and historic and lavishly subsidized by visitors had any right to be.’

So I have seen enough of Florence. Next time I will follow the senso unico signs to somewhere else!

By the way, did anyone who wasn’t a Medici ever live in Florence?