Creative Musings

Friday after class, since the weather was delightful Sasha and I decided to go to the Boboli Gardens which are behind the huge Medici palace called Palazzo Pitti. Just so you get an idea of the size of these gardens, they are the same size if not a little larger than the historic city center of Florence. You can see them on any map of Florence.

We have a card called the "Amici degli Uffizi" or "Friends of the Uffizi" which we paid a certain amount for, so we get into around 15 museums for free, and as many times as we want. Probably the most amazing thing about this card is that we get to cut to the very front of the line, so during tourist season, which unfortunately has already started, we don't have to wait in line. It's very official.

Sasha and I got our tickets and were heading towards the long line to get in, which was mostly full of large tour groups and teenage school kids. The man monitoring the line waved us in between two large groups, probably just because there were only two of us. Then we showed him our Amici degli Uffizi card and the VIP treatment started. He opened the stanchion for us, walked us to the front of the line (which happened to be in the middle of a group of students) where you go through security, and we were in! It was great.

Once we got into the gardens, we wanted to get away from the crowds of people and all the students so we could have a peaceful walk through the garden and not have random people in all our pictures. We were given a small map of the gardens when we entered, but we decided just to head to the right and check out that side of the garden. It turns out that's where the "Horticulture gardens" are, which I don't think we actually made it to. We ended up walking through a lot of what looked like a small forest through "tunnels" made of holm-oaks made between 1612-1614. They call it "latticework" which is a great term for it because that's exactly what the trees have been groomed as over the years.

I think one of our favorite parts of this walk was the smell--the smell of a damp forest. We are used to stone and exhaust, so the fresh air did us good. I saw a few little black birds in there that had the most orange beak that I have ever seen in my life. It was quite surreal. Almost something from Alice in Wonderland. I was probably supposed to follow the bird.

We walked until we got to the outer wall of the garden, which is of course amazing. Between the wall and the garden, separating the garden from a large path is a long fountain. This I found out later to be the Fountain of the Mostaccini which was made between 1619-1621. It is essentially a wall with a cascading chain of water that gushes from 16 gargoyle type creatures at each of the steps. Each of the gargoyles were different, some whole and some have been weathered by time. Naturally there is no water flowing through this fountain. I'm not sure if it ever does anymore, or if just now it is off.

Once we had walked down to see most of the gargoyles, we walked back up the steep hill to see where else the wall led us. Near the top is a tower, which I assume was used for watching purposes at some point in time. This wall itself is amazing. It is probably around 20 feet tall, made entirely of stone and now is covered in vines (which actually aren't attached to the wall itself for the most part) the size of small trees. At the top of the hill we turned back towards the main part of the garden on a small dirt path under a tree canopy. Beyond this we came to a little grassy area with a modern art sculpture of the David's face and a beautiful view of the outskirts of Florence opposite the garden. Here Sasha and I took a little break in the grass where we took a few photos. Then we were going to head down back towards the entrance as the sun was starting to go down. We had really long shadows, and I started taking photos of them, which led to a whole little photo shoot of shadows, which I will have to post later.

We headed back down the hills of the garden towards the palace where there is an Egyptian obelisk held up by small turtles and an enormous roman bath. It was at this point that we started seeing the cats that belong to the garden. They are definitely well fed cats, but they are still wild, so no petting the kitties for me.
On our way out we found what is called Grand Grotto. It was originally some sort of plant nursery built in 1557 but altered by different artists in 1583 and 1587. This grotto is the last section of the corridor from Palazzo Pitti all the way to Palazzo Vecchio (so the Medici could cross the river without every stepping on the dirty ground with the common people!) The decorations inside are so strange to me! It looks somewhat like the sea people from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies except people coming out of stone.

That was the end of our Boboli Gardens experience for the day. Next time we have a free afternoon and the weather is beautiful will explore another corner of the massive gardens. CLICK HERE to see my photo album from the Boboli Gardens.

Labels: Boboli Gardens