Switzerland!: Florence and Pisa

Partially because of me and partially because the way my computer uploaded these photos, they are in a really random order. I will try to explain everything, although all the pictures that belong to one site might not be together. Just bear that in mind.

These first pictures you are viewing are from the Baptistery in Florence, Battistero di San Giovanni or the Baptistery of John. It was built around 1100 A.D. This baptistery is famous for the doors, created by Andrea Pisano and the north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. Michelangelo called the doors by Ghiberti "the Gates of Paradise"

These are all pictures of the ceiling.

These are "the Gates to Paradise"

Okay the following are views of Florence from the top of the Duomo. The Duomo is located directly adjacent to the Baptistery above.

Just a random cool building.

The following are pictures of the ceiling of the Duomo. It was amazing. I climbed inside and was on this balcony where you can walk around and view the ceiling, if that makes sense.

Above is a picture of me looking down in to the cathedral from the balcony on which I was viewing the ceiling.

More ceiling.

This was something on the way up to the ceiling.

Above are the steps within the ceiling. There were about 460 total steps. First I walked to the balcony on which you could view the ceiling, and next you walk within the dome to the top where you can view all of Florence.

Below is the Duomo from the outside.

A little about why the Duomo is famous. It is Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. Work began on the 1296, but the dome portion went unfinished for many years since no one had built a dome so large before. A competition was held to see who could complete it and Lorenzo Ghiberti (the guy who made the baptistery doors) and Filippo Brunelleschi were the main competitors. Brunelleschi created it though a unique design. He used chains to counteract the hoop stress. The dome was not completed until 1436.

Above is the front of the Duomo.

Below is a famous bridge in Florence. It is called Ponte Vecchio. Ponte means bridge in Italian. I am amazed how similar French and Italian are, not that I could understand more than a few word of what anyone was saying, but I could read some. Anyway, I believe it is famous because it was the only bridge not boomed, it was built first around 996, and later rebuilt at 1345. There isn't really much more to know about it, it just has a lot of shops and was fun, but crowded to walk along.

Below is just an open area with statues. It is where Michelangelo's "David" was before it was moved inside a museum. A replica now stands in its place. This is directly next to the Uffizi Gallery which is one of the oldest and most famous museums in the world. I couldn't take pictures inside thought. It was nice, we happened to be there for Italy's culture week, so museums were free! Awesome. Go to Italy in mid April!

We actually went to Pisa on the way to Florence, but anyway here is THE Leaning Tower of Pisa. Pisa was also the hometown of Galileo, by the way.

I took like a lot of pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, mostly because that is all there is to see in Pisa, and I probably will only be there once in my life. I mean, there is more to see in Pisa, but just famous churches and an old university and such. So the tower really isn't that big. But it was crazy how the elevation of the foundation differs in feet from one side to the other. I tried to get a picture of that, but to no avail.

I was looking at this and trying to see if I tilted my camera at all to make it lean more, but I didn't. You can see the buildings and people standing straight in the picture. It really leans that much.

One slightly disappointing aspect of Europe has been that I often see scaffolding on major sites because they are doing restorations. You can kind of see the scaffolding here, but I tried not to get too much of it. This past week I went to Rome and half the Pantheon was blocked with scaffolding. It just wasn't the same. Coming here I thought that since things were built hundreds of years ago I wouldn't see construction. Wrong.