In Florence, all roads lead to the Duomo. The crowds have been getting thicker, so we know we are getting close. We try a few alleys. Through one we see the famous white and green marble cathedral topped by the red-tiled dome. 

Walking along, we notice that,  this is not just the usual throng of tourists. There is a smattering of people wearing fluorescent running bibs. We end up asking a white haired, eighty year old man tying up his running laces and are told that he is getting ready to run a hundred kilometers ultra marathon. The race starts here at the Duomo and ends in Faenza. There is a big hill to run over, and he might finish in eighteen hours, he says with a grin. 

The sight of an eighty year old getting ready to run a hundred kilometers is frankly more inspiring than all the Renaissance art in Florence, so we climb on a bench and watch the runners. Anyway, the Duomo is fenced off for the day. We cheer loudly as the first batch of runners gets going. These are clearly the professionals, an East African leads the pack.  

The amateurs follow and get the loudest cheers. One of the runners hugs a cheering woman who might or might not have been related.

The next day, we get closer to the Duomo. The facade is busy with carved arches topped with triangles and statues safe in their niches. White marble, for the large panels, green and red for the framed borders. This is not renaissance art, and is fairly recent, from the 19th century.  The dome is properly renaissance though, designed by the goldsmith turned architect Brunelleschi in the fourteen hundreds.  

No one knew how to build a big dome back then and the church authorities decided to have a competition. The good goldsmith submitted his design and so did his rival, Ghibberti. Bruneleschi’s design won the day and he created an inner octagonal dome on which the outer dome was supported. 

Weighed down by a million bricks, cracks soon appeared, although modern engineers assure us that the cracks actually help the dome to flex and breathe. In winter the cracks widen, and in summer the bricks expand and fill up the gaps. Perhaps this was Bruneleschi’s secret plan all along. 

Besides the cathedral, is the baptistry where the citizens were baptized before being allowed into the house of God. The door panels on this are rather famous. It was here that Ghibberti earned his cred. A few decades before the dome design competition, there was the door panel competition and a young Ghibberti won. Apparently, Brunelleschi was none too pleased. Ghibberti though, turned in a masterpiece, and even the certified man-genius Da Vinci would be impressed and declare that these were indeed the doors of paradise. 

The panels are all correctly biblical and have the usual menagerie of sheep, kings, and angels. Ghibberti even put in a self-portrait for posterity. 

Something peculiar was going on around Florence six hundred years ago. The black death of Plague had culled half of Europe’s population. What we call Italy now, was a bunch of small states constantly testing their fighting spirits against each other.  With fewer humans to do stuff after the pandemic, wages increased and Florence began attracting skilled workers. 

The bankers financed everything and profit accumulated as it must in a few banking families. The rich of Florence did not want kings and popes to have their fingers in the pie and so Florence was a republic, ruled by a few wealthy citizens. Oligarchy might be the modern term. The most notable amongst these families were the Medicis.

The rich had good taste and they paid the artists handsomely for some good decor to furnish their homes and impress their friends. The somber religious art of the Middle Ages was deemed too dull and excessively droopy-eyed.  

The artists, answerable only to their wealthy patrons turned to the classical Greeks for inspiration. Rome might have fallen a thousand years back, but the Romans had done a good job of copying from the Greeks before they disappeared. 

If the Romans, could stand up the dome of the Pantheon, surely these artists of the Renaissance, backed by the bankers could build the Duomo. Capitalism has always been the answer.

We walk back along the Palazzo Vecchio and join the throng of tourists who jostle to get the perfect picture of perhaps the world’s most famous sculpture. This is Michaelangelo’s David, and although the present one is a replica, it’s a good hundred years old. There are other assorted sculptures in the adjacent Loggia. The theme is mostly beheadings and rapes, but the characters are from hallowed antiquity, and so must be appreciated. Context is everything, the art historians insist.

We cross the Arno River on the Ponte Vecchio. This old bridge, built on stone arches,  was the haunt of tanners and butchers in the Middle Ages. Today, jewelers occupy colorful stores and sell their exquisite and appropriately expensive wares. Some of the stuff is really pretty. Legend has it that Hitler himself, did not want this bridge to be bombed and so this was the only crossing on the Arno not bombed into dust. It makes for a colorful backdrop for pictures today.

We while away the late afternoon in the piazza outside the Santo Spirito basilica. Pigeons bathe in the fountain. There are vans that double up as storefronts and if the jewelry stores in the Ponte Vecchio were a bit too expensive, there are bargains to be had here. Fresh tomatoes, faux leather jackets, bracelets made with shards of ceramic pottery, and fresh bread. San Spirito is more earthy. The basilica is bare from the outside but has a delightfully leafy pond inside, complete with lilies. A chapel also houses a dreamily lit wooden crucifix, hanging in mid-air with a skinny Jesus. This is one of Michaelangelo’s sculptures, not as famous as the David. 

But sitting here in the quiet chapel, with photography prohibited and only one other tourist, I begin to understand what the Renaissance was all about.