[A] My time in Florence

Siena is a 75 minute bus or train ride away from Florence, one of Western Civilization's greatest treasure troves of culture, and naturally my vicinity brought me there on a number of occasions- three for class, three for fun, one of which was with Pomai. I have seen the center and the suburbs, the major churches, the more major art, the Dante society, the European Institute, the Doors of Paradise (and the replicas that stand now in their place), and the hollow Duomo; bought fioretine stationary, leather, fabric, and of course food. I have eaten my way through a visiting German Christmas market; viewed the city from above, smelled the city from below; taken a cappuccino at the former home to the Italian futurist movement; strolled on the Ponte Vecchio at dusk with my girlfriend; relived the bonfire of the vanities in Piazza della Signoria; and pretended to be a young Michelangelo marveling at the works of his artistic predecessors. 

 The city has opened its walls to the world, ushered into a new era by the prosperity of its bankers and the success of its artists, eclipsing its former neck-in-neck rival, the still-bitter Siena, as it would have not thought possible; briefly acted as the capital city to a fledgling republic, a role that required destroying most of the medieval city that remained; braved a two-year battle between Germans and the Resistance, divided by the Arno river that runs through the center; birthed literary geniuses like Dante, Petrarca, and Boccacio, who served as the models for a fledgling Italian language; given queens to France; given a king to greater Tuscany; invited Fra Girolamo, a.k.a. Savonarola, as a welcome voice of change; and burned Fra Girolamo in an act of popular solidarity.

 My studies may very well lead me back to Firenze, and despite its conversion into a tourist utopia, I don't think I would resist all too much.
-A