Today is Medici Chapel and Santa Maria Novella. I'm glad that after today we won't be visiting any more churches or Basilicas, except the Vatican. Which is actually hysterical, now that I think about it. I'm sick of churches but I still have the mother of all church complexes to visit in Rome.
Medici Chapel starts with the darker ground floor with a lot of tombs in the floor and names on the plaques. Upstairs is another matter entirely.
The Chapel is huge. All the Cosimo's are interred here. Only two of them have gigantic statues. We don't know why the others don't. But the floor is complex designs with red, green, white and brown marble. The walls are the same. And the ceiling is painted on the entire enormous dome with colorful scenes in the style of all the churches.
There are two rooms behind the altar that are open today. They house reliqueries in fine crystal, silver, gold, and gemstones with bones and fingers and skin from famous Medici's. It's creepy as hell. There aren't just a few. There are *dozens*. Bones on display. One looks like half a scalp and skull.
There is a room where two of the most famous Medicis are actually interred. Giuliano Medici, the younger brother of Lorenzo Medici, was nursing a bad knee on Easter Day 1478 and had to be helped to the cathedral—by the very men who were plotting to kill him and his brother during mass. The assassins, members and supporters of the Pazzi family, banking rivals of the Medici, killed him. Lorenzo escaped and later assumed control of the government again.
Both brothers are buried in this back room, with gorgeous marble statues over their crypts. Each group of statues has Day and Night or Dawn and Dusk, represented by a man and a woman. They're stunning. It's insane to think these two famous brothers are laid to rest right here where I'm standing.
Next, we walk to Santa Maria Novella. Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated opposite, and lending its name to, the city's main railway station. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church. Groundbreaking began in the 1200's, but some of the art is from 1100.
The church is obviously one that was designed for actual religious practitioners, not the wealthy. It's stucco and sandstone and cement. The flood in 1966 did a huge amount of damage to anything 12 feet and lower. The water line is marked and commemorated. It's shocking, considering it's a good ways from the Arno river.
We get multimedia guides and each of us wanders the complex and grounds. I can't imagine how anyone remembers everything. There's so much to learn and to know.
It takes us several hours to finish visiting Novella, and the walk back to our flat is exhausting. Robert and I immediately turn around and leave to take another piece of luggage, filled with souvenirs, to Mail Boxes Etcetera to mail home.
We end our day with dinner at the local eatery close to our flat. Robert is bottomless, as usual, but Anya and I are stuffed full pretty quickly. Robert has two gin and tonic and I have a bright orange "spritz". It tastes like orange peels and nyquil?
That's fine, because I'm out cold the second I get home. Robert writes a nice letter to the twins who own the flat, in Italian.
This is what's on our celing:
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