Wash Uffizi, Drive Me to Firenze
An ode to the Italian city that oozes history and culture
In the summer of 1985, the members of the band Phish were vacationing in Firenze, also known by its English name Florence. They crossed paths with a German friend, so the story goes, who blurted out excitedly to guitarist Trey Anastasio, “When I’m with you, you enjoy myself!”
Firenze is a city that has enchanted and inspired unknown numbers of greats. When young Swedish painter Hilma af Klimt — whose 2018 retrospective at the Guggenheim was the best-attended in the museum’s history — was required to travel for her art studies, she went to Firenze.
From the third floor of her hotel, she sketched the church of San Lorenzo. She went around the city, studying Renaissance frescos and sculptures. Four years later, in 1907, she was making these paintings:
Arguably, we wouldn’t have the Italian language as we know it today without the city of Firenze and its erudite residents, the fiorentini.
When Dante was born in Florence in 1265, it was a self-governing city state of great importance; however, it was divided by factions that varied according to their loyalties to the Pope, or to the Holy Roman Emperor. When a party that opposed his came into power, Dante was banished from his native Florence, threatened with a death sentence if he returned. He never did and pined for his native city. But his works, written in the Florentine dialect, lived on and later influenced the formation of what we know as modern Italian.
That formation took place during the years of the risorgimento, when Italy fought to become a unified kingdom, in the first half of he Nineteenth Century. One famous story features Italy’s defining writer, the Milan-born Alessandro Manzoni, who authored a massive historical novel called The Betrothed (I promessi sposi). Highly cultured, Manzoni desperately sought a language that was more refined than his native Milanese (ouch, sorry, friends in Milano).
The legend goes, Manzoni went to Florence and washed his clothes in the Arno river, metaphorically bathing himself in the city’s soul. He then rewrote the entire novel using elements of Florentine dialect, asserting its position as the rightful framework of modern Italian.
I spent three days in Firenze in October, writing from the third floor (you and me, Hilma) of a very special place, the artist residency Numeroventi. Operated out of a breathtaking historic building, with a majestic ground floor consisting of a foyer, a kitchen and dining table, and a reading room, Numeroventi has a limited number of bespoke rooms — designed in part by early art and design residents — which are sometimes available for creatives to stay.
I cannot explain how exquisite this was, to draft pages of what I hope will become a book about my Italian heritage in a building with marble staircases.
Numeroventi is currently offering residencies on an invite-only basis, but they also offer events, some art-based and some culinary. Definitely check out their Instagram to keep up, and reach out to them directly if you are hoping to stay there to work on or research an artistic project. (They are also hiring right now, hot tip.)
Where to Be in Firenze
Of course, it’s fair to say that Firenze can be a tricky place to focus on a project… because there’s just so much to enjoy, in terms of art, food, wine, and that naughty little habit: shopping. It does fill up with tourists to an annoying degree in the summer months, but in spring or autumn it’s much more pleasant.
Here’s a little sampler of places in Florence I’ve discovered over the years.
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