Firenze Fine

The Duomo of Florence, also known as the Cathedral of Santa Maria dei Fiori, dominates the center of it's Piazza half a kilometer north of the Arno River. This structure stands out for its size and colorful detail, its exterior a dazzling pattern of white, green, and pink marble. Among its most prominent features are its grand dome by Brunelleschi, its bell tower by Giotto, and the Baptistery, which bore the bronze caste doors known as "the Gates of Paradise" by Lorenzo Ghiberti. The doors currently in place are replicas, the originals undergoing restoration in the nearby Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. The google maps street view provides an exceptional perspective on this church. In the early afternoon in mid September, we found the area surrounding the church to be pleasant and not too crowded. There was, however, an bit of a line to get inside, and since so much of the allure of this building is its exterior, we decided not to enter, but instead headed to one of the more peculiar museums in this city.

The Museo Di Storia Della Scienza houses a collection of scientific instruments and curiosities. The rooms contains ancient astrolabes and sundials, as well as levels and surveyor's instruments. The museum houses an early mechanical calculator, prisms, globes, microscopes, and an interesting collection of optical illusion toys. There are a variety of weather instruments, such as early thermometers and barometers. There is an entire room dedicated to clocks; early electrical machines and experimental contraptions make up another. Still other rooms stock devices used to demonstrate pneumatics, hydraulics, and other experiments or demonstrations of physics. Among the most disturbing collections are the surgery and obstetrics items, which display not only tools used to perform early medicine, which may include "skull and eye surgery; obstetrics and gynecology; lithotomy; amputation; removal and incision", but also the walls are lined with wax models on infants in the womb, many demonstrating all that can go wrong in childbirth with the clarity of a full color cutaway. The collection concludes with items related to pharmacy, chemistry, and measuring. But perhaps all of this, even as interesting as it was, would not have been enough to draw us to the museum. It was, in fact the rooms dedicated to astronomy that were of supreme interest.

There is a later room dedicated to more developed telescopes, but rooms IV and V hold the real treasures. These rooms house possessions and creations of Galileo. Among the collection of smaller items are the very lens through which he first saw the moons of Jupiter, and his very own middle finger. They also have the only two telescopes made by him still in existence today. It is accepted, though generally not well known, that Galileo did not in fact invent the telescope, but what he saw when he used them to look at the moon, the planets, and the sun, he used as evidence for the Copernican model of a sun centered universe.

Unsatisfied with merely the finger of the man, we headed over to the Basilica di Santa Croce, his final resting place, as well as that of several other world famous Italians. From the front, the Basilica's exterior matches that of the Duomo, but the sides are more plain. Within the walls of the church, despite the art and decorations, it is the many tombs, many laid into the very floor of the church, that attract attention. It is here that Florence built its empty tomb for Dante, who remains in Ravenna. Here also lies the body of Niccolò Machiavelli, author of the Prince and the Art of War. As I have said, here also lies Galileo, and finally Michelangelo Buonarroti, perhaps the most famous sculptor and painter in the world, has found his final rest here as well.

Statue at the Basilica

Niccolò Machiavelli

Dante's Memorial

Galileo

Michelangelo