A Church and a Palace (Day 46 - GToE)

I was going to spend a good amount of this posting to rant about how much I hate the Catholic Church and their money grubbing ways, but my anger has subsided over the course of the day. Seriously, though, the Catholic Church is worth so much money that it's impossible to actually calculate its net worth, why are they not only charging me to tour their ruddy churches, but also I have to pay for the privilege to use their bathrooms? Plus they don't even reduce the price of their tickets when a portion of their sites are closed due to various reasons. Argh, now I'm angry again. Unfortunately, some of the best art in Italy is owned by the Church so if you want to see it, you're stuck up shit's creek without the proverbial paddle.

Okay, I actually didn't do all that much today. I toured two places: Basilica of Santa Croce and Pitti Palace. 

Let's start with Santa Croce. Completed in 1385, Santa Croce is "the largest Franciscan church in the world. Its most notable features are its sixteen chapels, many of them decorated with frescoes by Giotto" (Wikipedia). It is also know for its tombs and cenotaphs (memorial for someone buried in another location) of some of Italy's best and brightest stars; such as Michelangelo (tomb), Machiavelli (tomb), Dante (cenotaph), Galileo (tomb), Rossini (tomb), Marconi (cenotaph), and others. In addition to these memorials, there is a pretty little chapel, cloister, chapter house, and refectory. I also took a turn through the crypt which doesn't have anyone famous buried there but did have some interesting headstones. Yeah, I've got a slight obsession with headstones and death these days. Hmmm...I wonder why? Oh right, I'll be joining them relatively soon.

After leaving Santa Croce, I walked over the Arno River to tour Pitti Palace, which is a vast Renaissance palazzo and was the chief residence for the Medici family. Broken down into several museums, the palace houses an insane amount of paintings. There are approximately 500 paintings in the Palatine Gallery, which are from the 16th and 17th centuries; artists such as Titian, Raphael, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Rubens, and so many more. The Palace has the 2nd largest collection of paintings by Raphael (the Vatican beats it by 1). There is a Gallery of Modern Art which features mostly Italian artists from the 19th and 20th centuries. Other than 2 paintings by Camille Pissaro, the rest of the artists were mostly unknown to me, but there were a few paintings that I found interesting. Within the palace is also a Costume Gallery which comprises six thousand items including costumes dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries, theatre costumes and accessories. Not all of these items are shown. There is a porcelain museum and a silver museum (neither of which I toured). Plus there are extensive gardens (Boboli Gardens). It's quite a large and sometimes overwhelming site to tour in one day. I was completely exhausted to the point of weeping when I finished my tour of the palace.

I didn't do much else after that. I meandered a little around Florence and then went back to the hostel to do my laundry. Check out my Day 46 photos on my GToE photo site.

Tomorrow, I'm very excited to be taking a tour of Tuscany: Pisa, San Gimignano, and Siena. I've visited Pisa before, but cannot wait to see Siena!!  I'm hoping we get there before darkness falls.