Wanderlust - Dreams of Traveling

Tuscany, Florence, and the Legacy of a Strong Medici Woman

May 17, 2021

Now that I’ve gotten both my vaccines and the pandemic seems to be winding down a bit in the US, my mind has been wandering off to distant places, dreaming about the days when travel can begin again. To make my current case of wanderlust even more intense, Facebook has been reminding me this week with my own photos that it was five years ago this month, in May 2016, that I ran away from home.

I’d retired from teaching the previous June, my son Dean moved away from California to Boston in August, Mom died in November, and my sister and I finished closing up Mom’s house and sorting through her things in February. I was ready to escape to somewhere far far away! So, I packed my bags and left for Italy—my first ever visit to that beautiful country.

The adventure began at the picturesque borghi (small village) of Anghiari. I was greeted by the Road Scholar Adventures tour guide, Erika Cennini, handed my ornate brass room key, and helped upstairs to my comfortable room in the small family-run Hotel la Meridiana (Hotel of the Sundial).

Anghiari is a walled city, with its first structures dating back to the 1100s. It’s a town of narrow winding roads and walkways that lead off the main square and climb up towards churches, homes, bell towers, museums, restaurants, and cafes. It’s a timeless place where it was easy to lose yourself, yet never get lost. People were friendly and welcoming, and it would be home and base camp to the ten members of our RS Adventure group for ten days. I would spend every free moment wandering up, down, and around the narrow pathways and up onto the wall-walk of that beautiful town. Rather than tiring me, all that walking filled me with energy.

Before leaving home, I’d queried Amazon for novels set in Tuscany. I wanted to get in the mood. That’s how I ended up reading Summer’s Lease by John Mortimer on the flight across the Atlantic. It’s a lighthearted, British-style mystery that follows an English family on their summer holiday in Tuscany. One character is determined to find every fresco painting by artist Piero della Francesca. Being unschooled in Renaissance art, I didn’t recognize the artist’s name. In fact, I hate to admit it, but since I was reading a novel, I just assumed the fictional character was seeking artworks by a fictional artist.

Lo and behold! Was I ever wrong.

As a part of the tour, we studied with Professor Mario Carniani, a specialist in Early Renaissance art of the Arezzo region, in the heart of which sits Anghiari. And who do you suppose is the most important Early Renaissance painter of the Arezzo region? You guessed it. Piero della Francesca. A number of the artist’s frescos are found in the area right around Anghiari. The Professor escorted us along what’s called the Piero della Francisca Trail, a zig-zag wandering path around the region to “collect” frescos. We found them in grand churches, museums, and hard-to-find, nearly abandoned, tiny chapels.

It was like a priceless art scavenger hunt!

There was lots more than art to enjoy in Tuscany. I ate delicious food and tried new dishes, including wild boar and pheasant. I learned to make pasta. I drank exquisite red wine and indulged in gelato repeatedly. In one tiny neighborhood museum, I held a Stone Age hand axe and then a Bronze Age figurine in the palm of my hand. I painted tile. I wandered in an olive orchard and learned to properly taste olive oil. I visited a remote convent founded by Saint Francis, and a tiny church built in the 1100s. I walked through an ancient underground network of cisterns, a luxurious castle, and the House of Vasari.

At the tour’s conclusion, I headed back to Florence.

My son Dean joined me in Florence, a very good thing since the Airbnb apartment, only two blocks from the Duomo, was a fourth-floor walk-up. Though not as old as the Duomo, the staircase was ancient, narrow, and steep. The only way I could have gotten my large suitcase up those four flights without Dean’s help was if I’d emptied it on the ground floor and carried its contents up one armload at a time!

Dean headed off to a four-day business conference, and I explored the incomparable Renaissance city on my own. I climbed the 463 steps that wind inside Brunelleschi’s Dome all the way to the top with its city-wide 360-degree panorama view. I learned the Italian habit of enjoying a leisurely breakfast of coffee and pastry at a sidewalk café and then a leisurely lunch of pizza or pasta at a different sidewalk café all while watching parades of people go by. I looked forward to hearing the bells ring throughout the city at appointed hours. I learned to navigate the narrow streets with the crowds, moving around cars that shared even the narrowest of alleys with pedestrians.

Twice for dinner, I met up with two new friends from our RS Adventure, Kit and Dawn, who had also extended their stay. What a treat to have fellow explorers with whom to share the day’s stories!

Sculptures. Paintings. Mosaics. Carvings. Architecture. Textiles.

Pieces of art I’d only seen in photos by artists I’d only read about in books were right in front of me. Art is everywhere in Florence. In the streets. In the squares. In every building. On every flat surface—inside and out, floor to ceiling, and on the floors and ceilings, too. Not an inch, not a centimeter of a surface is left undecorated.

Wait! Did you know? Florence only exists as we know it today—Firenze, the amazing Renaissance city of art—because of a strong and rebellious woman?

It’s true. The savior of Florence’s art collection was Anna Maria Luisa de’Medici, whose portrait hangs in the Uffizi Galleries. It’s a great story!

We all know the Medici family controlled Florence and its art collection for centuries. But in the end, the grand family was reduced to Cosimo III’s daughter Anna Maria Luisa de’Medici and her two brothers. Both of her brothers died without “producing” heirs, so it was up to Anna Maria Luisa to “produce” a son to carry on the lineage. She married Austrian Johann Wilhelm, who turned out to be sterile, so they had no children. She would be the last of the Medici line.

Anna Maria Luisa outlived her husband, her siblings, and all distant male relatives who battled for control of the Medici power, properties, art collection, and vast wealth. In 1737, Anna Maria Luisa arranged the Patto de Familia, the Family Pact. This contract stated that upon her death all the Medici family property and wealth would be given to the Tuscan state, with one very strict provision: nothing was ever to be removed from the city of Florence. [In cash alone, not counting property or priceless art works, that fortune was worth well over 400 million in today’s dollars] The last of the Medici dynasty, she died in 1743, and the huge Medici art collection, amassed over the course of 300 years, became Florence’s art collection. And Florence is what it is today as a result.

Thank you, Anna Maria Luisa! That’s quite a legacy, girl!

Dean and his friend Eytan joined me again in Florence at the end of their conference. We three traveled to Cinque Terra, where, with Eytan as our culinary guide, we hiked and ate our way through those quaint sea-cliff-balanced towns.

Then Dean and I spent a few days in Siena, in the beautiful Medieval part of the city, where our Airbnb was an old winery and we accidentally witnessed the dramatic pageantry of one of the preliminary events to Siena’s famous annual Palio horse race. Members of the Drago contrada (dragon neighborhood), dressed in red, green, and gold Medieval costumes and waving ceremonial flags of the same colors paraded through the streets to the beat of drums. We joined thousands gathered in the main piazza, Piazza del Campo, to watch as, one by one, the flag of each neighborhood chosen to compete in the Palio was displayed through a high window of the city hall to raucous fanfare.

We ate a beyond-delicious dinner to celebrate Dean’s birthday at a candle-lit restaurant carved into an ancient Etruscan cave deep beneath the city streets.

What an adventure!

I’m thinking, even as the pandemic winds down, it will be 2022 before I will feel comfortable traveling all the way to Europe again. I’m thinking that a combination of stay-at-home wanderlusting and domestic road-tripping will be as adventuresome as I’m going to be for a while.

What about you?

What’s your comfort level around traveling?

Where are you going to go when things open up?

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