Florence

Here is medieval Europe and the Renaissance period at its worst and its best, and it is impossible to do justice to its riches in a few hours as a tourist (as we have been), or in a few fragments of memory as I share now. But you have to go there, if only to savour the extravagant splendour of the buildings and the glorious and inglorious history which so many of them represent.

The centre of the city is dominated by the plazza del Duomo, the outer walls of the vast cathedral inlaid with green and pink marble, the massive cupola above the east end crowning the building with magnificence. I have a book about its architect, Brunelleschi. The intrigues attending the competition before he was appointed and the difficulties of building it,are examples of the intense rivalries that were typical of the Florentine Republic. The old city is divided by the Arno River bridged by the famous Ponte Vecchio, with its shops built on its edges and held up by stilts.

The history of the city is entwined with the accomplishments and scandals of the Medici family who at various times so dominated civic and religious affairs that at times the republicanism for which Florence was famed amongst the Italian states, faded into insignificance. Their authority and influence extended from the 15th to the 18th centuries. We visited the mausoleum in San Lorenzo where various members of the family are entombed, a dark and forbidding place which to us breathed power and corruption.

But the family of course were wealthy patrons of every form of art, which made Florence a byword for the achievements of the renaissance. Many such works can be seen in the Uffizi gallery, one of the world’s finest, the opulence of many of the paintings in contrast to the bleakest moments in the life of Jesus, notably his death, which fill the ornately framed canvases of so many paintings of the period.

Michaelangelo’s David is perhaps the most famous statue in the world. Moved around quite a bit since its difficult journey from the sculptor’s studio, its present site is in the Accademia Gallery, whilst a convincing replica stands outside the Palazzo Vecchio. It is an astonishing work, the youthful David awaiting calmly his encounter with the giant Goliath, beautiful, confident and yet vulnerable. Out of proportion in some ways, we noticed the huge hands as they wait to use the young warrior’s deadly sling.

Bryan

Reykjavik

Some cities are so much themselves that they are incomparable with anywhere else. This is one of them. On a visit to Iceland some years ago, we approached the city from the sea, traveling on a huge cargo ship, valuing the sudden calm after a very rough crossing, having left the port of Immingham on the bank of the Humber River four days previously. It made an impressive arrival, for Reykjavik is spread across a peninsula and we had a panoramic view of the mountains and the town itself, the Atlantic Ocean bordering the city on almost all sides.

The world’s northernmost capital and with a small population of less than 200,000 ( 60% of Iceland’s total ) the city sells itself as a centre of nightlife, and the packaged weekend trips especially for young people have become a must for the jet set. The nights in summer hardly exist of course. It never gets really dark and should I have wanted to, I could have taken photos without a flash light at 2 am in the morning. You see the sun set and then almost immediately rise again. (The alternative in winter of course is that there isn’t much daylight!).

We were surprised at the lack of great buildings, and many of the houses are built in corrugated iron painted in lovely pastel shades. We stayed in one such house which like many others are made into bed and breakfast accommodation during the holiday season. Of Celtic and Norwegian origin, local people have their own language but many also speak English. From the town you can see the majestic Mt. Esja and on a sunny day, the Snaefellsjokull glacier appears crystal-like on the western horizon. The city is only slightly south of the Arctic Circle and whilst it claims to have a temperate climate, when we visited in July it was fiercely cold!

Food can be expensive because the volcanic basis of the island severely limits agriculture and many of the perishable goods have to be imported. But there is pure energy at the heart of the city whether from the boiling thermal energy underground or the natural green energy within the city and around it. Bathing in the hot springs here and elsewhere in Iceland is a tourist must. We enjoyed visiting the National Gallery and the Art Museum, helping us to fill in the peculiar character of the city and the wider country. An old culture going back to the Vikings yet a young country, the land only 20M years old and changing all the time, and the nation only politically independent since 1940. And the bad news? Reykjavik has an average of 213 rainy days a year.

Bryan