Letter from Florence

Florence railway station like most big city railway stations is a mess. The area directly outside is a confused jumble. There is a piazza which fronts the station and an elegant church opposite but the place is teeming with buses cars, lorries and people.

We pass the next few hours on the top of sightseeing buses taking in the slightly stilted commentary of the guide, walking through the city streets and of course getting hopelessly lost.

But it is a fine experience, from the breath taking height of the gardens above the city which allow us a view of the city laid out along the river Arno, to the narrow streets which almost without warning open out into stunning piazzas.

I am always intrigued by these contrasts and wonder to what extent they are a haphazard accidental result of money and opportunist self-aggrandisement on the part of some local worthy or careful town planning. Either way it has got to be impressive. The narrow streets with their tall buildings which reach three of four storeys high can be dark and a little claustrophobic. On hot summer evenings you wonder how anyone can be comfortable in rooms which look out on to other such rooms separated by at best about 10 feet.

This is a living reminder of what many of our cities would have been like in the Middle Ages and no doubt even further back in the slums of ancient Rome. So it is both a relief and even surprise that often as not these lead onto a spacious piazza with its statutes, fountains and above all bright sunlight. Today they will be filled with hundreds of tourists and no doubt in the past they attracted plenty of people who arranged to meet friends and lovers or just wanted to sit and watch the life go by in the square.
Picture; street life, from the collection of Andrew Simpson