How to time travel your way back to Renaissance Florence
The first patrons to pit Raphael and Michelangelo directly against each other were the wealthy Florentine fabric merchant Agnolo Doni and his new young wife, Maddalena Strozzi. Soon after he came to Rome, they commissioned Raphael to paint their portraits against an idyllic Tuscan landscape. At the same time, they commissioned Michelangelo to make what […]
How to be the sort of tourist Italians love
A friend who lives in the centre of Florence came to dinner the other evening. We got to talking about tourists. “I can’t take it anymore,” she blurted out. “Just getting out of the front door has become an issue… then you queue for ages just to buy a loaf of bread, the prices are […]