Museum Day

Thursday June 2^nd

We spent the day today visiting a couple of museums.  In the morning we visited the Musee Galileo, which was just renovated last year.  We loved this museum. It was full of really cool old scientific instruments, some of them actually belonged to Galileo, some of them were based on his original designs  and some were just really cool old stuff. It is extremely hard to believe how little was understood about the world back in Galileo’s day.   Even telling time was extremely complicated back then.  There was an excellent collection of old timepieces, ship navigational aids, globes (both terrestrial and celestial) and wonderful old telescopes.  Several of Galileo’s original telescopes were there – perhaps the ones he used to find the moons of Jupiter, sunspots, and eventually prove that the earth was not the center of the world.

Other interesting items in the museum included the equipment used to prove Newton’s first and second laws, and to explain the laws of gravity. Many of these experiments are now routinely done by middle schools students in science classes, but this was seriously cutting edge science back in the day.  The museum had excellent explanations of all the equipment in English, and most rooms had flat screen TVs with videos of the experiments in action – how they were originally conducted and what they proved.  You could literally follow the evolution of science as you moved through the museum.

Caption - Two of Galileo's actual telescopes!

An interesting side note is that I took a bunch of photographs of the equipment until I got yelled at in the last room by a grumpy Italian woman security guard.  I asked her if there was no flash in the museum, and she clarified emphatically, “NO PHOTOS AT ALL!”  The interesting thing is that I had taken photos in front of several other male security guards who couldn’t care less that I was taking photos with flash.  Honestly – I never saw a sign one way or the other.   Our experience on this entire trip has always been that female museum guards are more diligent than male ones.  I am not sure if this is just our experience, but I am making a blanket conclusion here anyway. Be careful with photography in museums rooms with female security!

Luckily I already had photos of everything I wanted, including the best exhibit of all – Galileo’s middle right finger.  It was preserved by his students so he can give the finger to the Vatican for all of eternity.

After the Galileo museum we bided our time until our reservation for the Uffizi gallery. This is the best museum in the world for Italian Renaissance art, and the premier attraction in Florence. Only 600 people are allowed in the gallery at a time, so the standby line for tickets can be hours long.  You can get timed tickets in advance, which every guidebook and Florence hotel website recommends, so why people wait for four hours in beyond me. Do a little advance planning people!!!  We picked up our tickets 10 minutes before our entrance time and were let in right on time.

The museum had a great collection of Botticelli paintings including the incredibly famous “The Birth of Venus.”  The work was shown in context with other contemporary paintings and it was so fascinating to see how Botticelli’s work was such leap forward. It was simply not at all like anything that come before.

 There were also a number of Michelangelo paintings, including one he worked on at age 14 for another painter that he was apprenticed to.  The main painter did most of the work, but Michelangelo did one angel in the corner. This angel was so clearly superior to anything else in the painting that it was amazing to see.  It is said that the master painter gave up the craft soon after.

However, other than the Botticelli’s and Michelangelo’s, the rest of the works in the museum, were not really my thing.  Most of the work was religious iconography, and kind of repetitive to me after a while. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the art was incredible, but I am not really trained to appreciate it.  With the guidebook tour, I could at least grasp the key aspects, but we really only stopped at one or two paintings per room.  I can’t help wondering, do all the people who stand in line for hours to get into this museum really appreciate it? Or is this something that we feel that we should do, rather than really wanting to do?

Luckily,  when we finished the Uffizi gallery, Pizzaiuolo had not yet finished its lunch hours so we hurried over there for a repeat “best pizza in Florence” luncheon.  Again – wonderful.  Katie had the prosciutto, Paul had the same pizza he had yesterday, and I had one with artichoke, mushroom and ham. Yummy. We waddled to the bus stop afterwards to head home to digest in peace.