Florence, Italy

This is my 1st time to Florence, or Firenze as the Italians say. That means flower in Italian. This city was neck and neck with Siena in the Middle ages with war, architecture competition and being an art center of the world. Once the Black Plague hit, populations were devastated by a rate of 50%. Florence, being 100,000 and Sienna being 60,000, Siena lost too much population to continue building and Florence became the winner. The Rich Medici family came in and funded Michalegelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatelo, and many other famous painters, sculptors and architects.

We started off early and met our tour guide in front of the Medieval Fort & City Center.

This famous Bridge Ponte Veccio is a super cool bridge from the 1500's, Our guide shared that it was spared in World War 1 from Hitler and Germany by supposed bribe.

Heading into the Duomo (Florentine Cathedral), this is most famous for being the 1st Dome. They had to wait more than 20 years after the whole structure was complete until the architect was born and educated to come up with the design for the Dome. It took 16 years to build, 6 years to paint the frescos, and they used NO scaffolding from the ground, it was all suspended. Quite incredible . You could stare up for an hour at this huge building, towering over 300 feet above the ground. One interesting note, the building took almost 300 years to complete.

Walking up the stairs in between the "double dome" to reach the top. 463 stairs up.

Looking down through the glass is cool, but makes a horrible photos.

From the top, looking down on the city this is the belltower of the Duomo

Ending the day with Gelatto, this is perfect.