Il Battistero/Pitti Yoga

For my second art history class, I visited il Battistero di San Giovanni (or Baptistery of St. John) right next to Florence's Duomo. Dating back to the 11th century, it is one of the oldest buildings in the city and was constructed above the ruins of a wealthy man's villa during Roman antiquity. You can still see remnants of the original mosaic floor deep under the floor of the Battistero. 

I learned that Dante's La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) greatly changed the way artists communicated with people. Dante chose to write his influential work in the language of the common man (what eventually became Italian) instead of in Latin, a language that only the educated and/or rich understood. And, if you think about it, up until Vatican II approximately 50 years ago, mass was celebrated in Latin, which meant that for over 1000 years, catholics were kind of...in the dark.

A central view of the Battistero's ceiling

It's hard to be in the dark when gazing up at the Battistero's golden mosaic ceiling for two reasons: first, it is literally illuminating, aided by the light streaming in from the windows that line the octagonal building; then, it's that these mosaics reveal a Bibbia dei poveri (bible for the poor) of sorts. To make the bible understandable to all, artists such as Cimabue retold stories such as those of Adam and Eve, Joseph, and John the Baptist (to which this church is fittingly dedicated to) in the form of images. My teacher spent over half an hour guiding us through each frame, explaining details that we would easily have missed otherwise.

Interesting Facts

• The building is octagonal because there is one side for each day and then an eighth side/day symbolizing the resurrection or rebirth
• The devil depicted on the ceiling (not pictured), resembles the famous Minotaur. It inspired the Minotaur in Picasso's Guernica.

View of the Arno from Ponte La Carraia

After our class, my Austrian friend and I met up with Posh to cross the Arno and head to our favourite gelateria, Gelateria La Carraia. I made sure to remind them to remind me to take photos so that you could  finally visualize this place I have mentioned so many times in the past.

This is just one of the two displays. Yes, they have double the amount of gelato you see here--with totally different flavours, of course.

How do I love La Carraia? Let me count the ways:

1. I love thee for thy delicious flavours, particularly cookies, pistachio, and opera italiana (pistachio, hazelnut, and mystery crunchiness)
2. I love thee for thy generous portions
3. I love thee for thy economical prices, i.e. 1,30€ for 2 flavours, 2€ for 3 flavours, etc.
4. I love thee for thy vicinity to a bridge on which I can sit
5. I love thee for thy proximity to the Palazzo Pitti
6. I love thee for thy silent fame as many tourists and some locals do not know about you, for which I pity them (or should I say "pitti" them;)

My regular flavours: cookies and pistachio

We decided to sit in the sun of the piazza in front of Palazzo Pitti which required a lot of self-discipline. It's a five-minute walk away and in those five minutes it is very easy to consume one's entire gelato. I had almost forgotten to take the picture above so I stopped myself on the middle of a street, mid-walk, to take it before it was just a yummy memory.

After we finished our gelato, another friend joined us and soon proposed that I teach them some yoga. And I actually did for about 10-15 minutes, right in the middle of the busy piazza--something I'd never do in Vancouver! Posh took a few photos, one of which I'm sharing here of us doing dancer's pose. At one point, when we were doing eagle pose, a guy about five metres away from us started copying us too in front of his friends. It felt so nice to do something with a semblance of exercise.

We did some shopping on Via Por Santa Maria, where you can find two Zaras and an H&M within view of each other, and then, because Florence is such a small city, I bumped into my calabresi friends! Like always, I introduced them to who I was with and we all chatted in the middle of the street. Then it was time to go home for dinner. What a full day!

Piazza della Repubblica at night

Today's word of the day is addirittura. It means:

• absolutely
• even*
• directly
• really*

*used to denote surprise.

Surprisingly, I have yet to use it since it seems so complicated.