Palazzo Vecchio

Today I stood in amazement in one of the most stunning buildings I have ever seen.  I seriously think these are the places where people who decide to become architects must have a defining life moment.  The Palazzo Vecchio dates to 1299 and was primarily used as the center for city government.  It was also the Medici residence before the construction of the Pitti Palace.  While the building was renamed numerous times in its early history, the name given to it by Cosimo I is the one that has stuck.  Palazzo Vecchio literally means "old palace" in Italian.  Cosimo was referring to it as the old palace because he had built his family a new home with the Pitti Palace.  

If I was a Medici and my dad (Cosimo) was moving me out of the Palazzo Vecchio, I would have been pissed.  I mean, full on stomping, hissy fit, not talking to the parents type of mad.  While the grounds of the Pitti Palace (the Boboli Gardens) are beautiful, the building itself isn't that spectacular.  In fact, to me it seems quite "cold."  It is grand, but not spectacular.  The Palazzo Vecchio, on the other hand, just makes your jaw drop.  I giggled to myself a couple of times when I turned to look at Bella and she was standing there, mouth wide open, just like me.  Virtually every room is covered in frescos, from baseboards to the ceiling.  Many of the ceilings are inlaid with paintings on wooden planks.  It must be like an old fashioned version of Aaron and Candy Spelling's residences.  The thing that struck me most was how vivid the colors in the frescos have remained over so many years.  The oil painted ceiling panels have really darkened and they are quite a contrast to the bright frescos.

While the Palazzo Vecchio was the original "landing site" for Michelangelo's David statue (and there is still a replica there today), the girls and I had headed to the museum to learn more about the fresco painting style.  We did have the opportunity to oogle at some other statues by Michelangelo.  But, the lesser known Giorgio Vasari was the man of the hour.  

The girls and I joined a few other families with children to learn more about how to make a fresco and to try our hand at it.  When making a fresco, the walls are first covered with a rough layer of spackle - the spackle is made of sand, limestone and water.  Next, another skim coat of spackle is applied and the fresco is painted onto this wet spackle.  The spackle dries in about a day, so artists could only work on small sections at a time as the painting needs to be applied to the wet spackle so that it binds to the mortar and holds over time.  We all agreed that it was incredibly interesting to learn about the different minerals, plants and animals that were used to make the powder that ultimately became the tempera for the frescos.  We also found it interesting that sand from rivers was preferred over sand from the oceans for making the "spackle" because it did not contain salt which would alter the picture with a white fog once the fresco dried.

Bella really shined once we got to the painting part of our workshop.  She created a lovely street-scape during the evening hours.  Scarlett made fireworks of color.  We were surprised to find a fresco of fireworks over Florence in one of the stairways as we later toured the Palazzo Vecchio.  I made a traditional Florentine flor-de-lis (with a little help from Marco, our instructor).  I must say that I color by number VERY well!  

While there is much to do in Florence, especially as far as museums and art are concerned, the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio is not to be missed.