The Accessible Guide to Florence

By Cornelia Danielson

One of the worlds great cities, Florence is visited by over six million tourists each year, yet, despite some recent improvements in accessibility, the Cradle of the Renaissance still presents significant barriers. Imagine lunch in an outdoor caf, soaking up the warm September sun, where do you find an accessible restroom? Where to eat in a country whose main staples are bread, pizza, and pasta if you have an intolerance to wheat gluten? In which museums can you touch a Renaissance sculpture if you are visually impaired? Need to rent a wheelchair or find which museums have them on loan? Locate an accessible hotel with a roll-in shower? Find out if your power wheelchair will fit in the elevator of the Uffizi? Or discover the wheelchair-accessible paths in the Boboli Gardens? Reading A Guide to Accessible Florence, an indispensable resource written especially, but not only, for wheelchair or scooter users and slow walkers, will give you the answers to all these questions and to many more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 14, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465326027

Cornelia Danielson

Cornelia Danielson, an art historian and mother of a child with a disability, is founder and director of Barrier Free Travel, an American nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of accessible tourism in Florence, Italy.

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Copyright © 2004 by Cornelia Danielson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

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The information contained in this guide was held to be correct at

the time of publication. The author and collaborators of Barrier

Free Travel cannot be held responsible in law or otherwise for the

validity, accuracy, errors, omissions or any changes in information,

nor for any consequence of the information provided.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

History in a Nutshell

San Giovanni

Santa Maria Novella

San Lorenzo

San Marco

Santa Croce

Across the River: The Oltrarno

Outside the City Walls

Medici Villas

Museums, Music, Movies, and Sports

General Information and Practical Tips for Visiting Florence

Transportation

Accommodations

Places to Eat

Resources

English to Italian Glossary of Useful Access Words and Phrases

Conversion to the Metric System

Acknowledgments

Writing a guide describing accessibility in a Renaissance city was, to say the least, a challenge, an ambitious project with countless stones to unturn. Without the overwhelming cooperation and courtesy extended to Barrier Free Travel on the part of the directors and personnel of the museums, hotels, restaurants, theaters, transportation systems, and countless other organizations in the city of Florence who allowed us to inspect, measure, and evaluate their properties, this project would not have been possible. Special thanks are extended to the Florentine public bus transportation agency ATAF for permission to use their excellent plan, and to Maurizio Martini and Valerio Marucelli of Studio Comunica & Associati-Mediaetica for the floor plans, preparation of the maps, and cover photographs. Alessio Focardi, from the CGIL Ufficio Disabili, and Michela Neri, formerly of the Cooperativa 2001, helped to conduct the surveys, giving invaluable insight into a view of the world from wheels. The useful observations of many who have consulted Barrier Free Travel’s services, and especially those of Michele DeSha and Howard Chabner of San Francisco who also suggested the inclusion of the glossary and metric conversion table, are scattered throughout the book. Appreciation is also extended to Barrier Free Travel’s board members for their time and advice over the five years since the organization was founded. Generous support and encouragement have been given to the project by Mary and Harold Danielson; and Alex and Sebastian Vismara have indirectly contributed from behind the scenes by patiently waiting so many evenings for their mother to emerge from the office to fix their dinner. Certainly without the enthusiasm and ideas of Jennifer Cook, this project may never have gotten off the ground. Final and grateful acknowledgment is due to the Vidda Foundation and especially to Ursula Corning whose generosity brought Italy into the hearts of so many during her lifetime and will continue to do so through the publication of this book.

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Introduction

Florence is a medium-sized city with a population of almost 377,000, not counting the six million tourists that visit each year. One would hope to find in such a big tourist town many more services equipped for visitors, not to mention residents, with disabilities, especially since the Italian government passed important legislation on disability in 1989, predating the Americans with Disabilities Act by one year.

In France the oft-heard phrase is c’est la vie; in Italy it is pazienza. Patience is indeed needed to cope with the Italians’ often more relaxed attitude towards things, including compliance with building codes and the removal of architectural barriers. But then patience is needed by just about everybody who lives in or visits Italy, a country where some buildings date back to the days of the Roman Empire and where it is not unusual to find families living in a Renaissance palace or a fourteenth-century walkup. Some of the bumpy, stone-paved, traffic-congested narrow streets in cities like Rome and Florence hail back to medieval times. Even wider streets built in the sixteenth century to accommodate a new form of transportation—the carriage—were planned without sidewalks. In situations like these, installing a proper sidewalk with curb cuts sometimes just isn’t possible.

Fortunately, 2000 marked a Jubilee Year for the Roman Catholic Church, and in anticipation of the millions of visitors, the Italian government allotted a significant amount of money in various major Italian cities to restore ancient buildings and generally to improve viability. As a consequence, many of the sidewalks in the centro storico or historic center of Florence were rebuilt with smoother stones and curb cuts, and several major churches like Santa Croce and Santo Spirito were equipped with ramps. The year 2003 was designated by the European Union as the Year for People with Disabilities. The Regione Toscana or regional government of Tuscany, of which Florence is the principal city, celebrated with a weeklong series of sports and theatrical events and conferences on subjects ranging from architectural barriers to tourism and job opportunities. Initiatives like these mark a start in the right direction for a city like Florence, founded in 59 BC, to catch up to the twenty-first century.

Despite important improvements, Florence and Italy, in general, still present significant barriers to people with disabilities. The scenarios are numerous. How many hotels display the international wheelchair sign to indicate accessibility when, indeed, the interior of the hotel is accessible, but since it is located on the second floor with three steps in front of an elevator which is too small to accommodate a wheelchair, you can’t get there. Imagine having lunch in an outdoor café in Piazza della Repubblica, soaking up the warm September sun, where do you find an accessible restroom? Where do you eat in a country whose main staples are bread, pizza, and pasta if you have an intolerance to wheat gluten? In which museums can you touch a Renaissance sculpture if you are visually impaired? Reading The Accessible Guide to Florence will answer these questions and, hopefully, many more.

This book does not pretend to be a complete guidebook to Florence. For a serious guide giving detailed historical and artistic descriptions, the best remain Eve Borsook’s somewhat outdated but still valid The Companion Guide to Florence and Alta Macadam’s Florence, part of the famous Blue Guide series. By far the most exhaustive guide to the city is the excellent Firenze e Provincia (in Italian only) published by the Italian Touring Club.

The Accessible Guide to Florence, instead, like many pocket guides, gives a briefer description of each monument, but one which still allows the reader to enjoy and understand enough without necessarily needing to bring along another guidebook. The chapters giving information on the monuments are organized according to geographical districts, and each is accompanied by a map for easier orientation. An accessibility checklist indicates the wheelchair-accessible banks, Internet points, pharmacies, restaurants, and restrooms in the neighborhood. General historical/artistic descriptions of each monument are followed by a detailed description of the monument’s accessibility. There are chapters giving information on transportation, accommodations, places to eat, practical tips, and a brief history of the city. A guide explaining the mysteries of the metric system and a glossary with some useful phrases concerning accessibility are also included.

This guide is written primarily for slow walkers and wheelchair or scooter users, although some information has also been included for people with visual impairments, and a list of restaurants serving gluten-free meals is found in the chapter on Places to Eat. Rather than creating a criteria for specific levels of accessibility, detailed descriptions, intended to allow each reader to judge independently whether a specific place will be in his case, or in her case, accessible, have been provided instead. However, as a general rule, any entrance with more than the 2.5-centimeter or 1-inch threshold lip allowed by Italian law has been defined as accessible with assistance.

Two other important things should also be pointed out to readers consulting this book. Firstly, in general, platform lifts and stair lifts tend to be smaller and to have less weight capacity than their counterparts in the United States. Whenever possible, the exact dimensions and capacity of these lifts has been specified. Secondly, the majority of the streets and sidewalks in historic Florence are paved in stone and not covered with asphalt, which makes their surfaces highly unpredictable. Stable, firm, and slip-resistant accessible routes are difficult to come by, and one should always exert caution even in those areas which may be indicated as accessible. Having said this, however, one can’t fail to mention the exception to the rule since wheelchairs have been seen on the terrace of the Porcelain Museum and even heading up the steepest slopes of the Boboli Gardens.

While The Accessible Guide to Florence does not promise to become the be all and end all to everyone’s needs, it is a first attempt to give visitors to Florence the tools for an honest assessment of what they can do and what they can see in this wonderful city.

History in a Nutshell

The Roman Settlement

It may be hard to imagine that Florence, so often labeled as the cradle of the Renaissance, has been around a lot longer; to be precise, for over two thousand years. A Roman colony was founded on the north bank of the Arno River during the reign of Julius Caesar, perhaps as early as 59 BC. Memories of the Roman settlement still remain in the names and configurations of some of the streets. The neat grid pattern in the heart of Florence’s historic center between Via Tornabuoni, Piazza del Duomo, Via Proconsolo, and Piazza della Signoria defines the original layout of the fortified Roman town. Via delle Terme recalls the location of the Roman baths; Via del Campidoglio, where the main temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva stood. The curving streets—Via Torta and Via de’ Bentaccordi, together with Piazza de’ Peruzzi near Piazza Santa Croce—follow the perimeter of the Roman amphitheatre. In the basement of the Cinema Gambrinus near Piazza della Repubblica, once heart of the Roman forum, you can still see some Roman foundations. The Roman colony, however, was not the earliest important settlement in the area. Up on the hills to the north an Etruscan city, now called Fiesole, overlooked the river valley and was considered around the sixth century BC to be one of the most important cities in northern Etruria. Later absorbed into the Roman Empire, during the Middle Ages Fiesole remained independent until conquered by Florence in the twelfth century.

Middle Ages

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Florence, like the rest of Italy, was overrun by marauding barbarian tribes. The Dark Ages witnessed Goths and Byzantines struggling to gain control of the tiny settlement strategically located on the banks of the navigable Arno and near the foothills of the Apennine mountains with their important passes leading to the north. At the end of the sixth century, Florence fell under Lombard rule. Later, with the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, she was tossed into the hands of the Carolingians. While much of the country officially came under Carolingian dominion, real control lay in the hands of the local feudal lords. In subsequent centuries, strong loyalties developed, and interests were split along a very clear line dividing those who were loyal to the pope in Rome from those who were loyal to the German kings. By the thirteenth century this division had created two strong political factions in Italy: the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The ultimate split was already evident in the important and powerful figure of Matilda, countess of Tuscany, whose loyalty to the pope and desire to rid the peninsula of German rule led her to encourage the self-government of important walled cities like Florence. After Matilda’s death in 1115, Florence gained the status of independent city state or comune.

During the twelfth and thirteen centuries, Florence witnessed a spurt of economic and demographic growth. Much of the city’s good fortune was due to the development of the textile industry with a particular emphasis on the production of wool, the importance of which lasted up until the sixteenth century. Banking and the production of silk became other important activities, and by the early thirteenth century, Florence’s influential business community was organized into powerful guilds. Florence’s economic growth attracted outsiders to come and gain their fortune in the prosperous city, among them were the Medici who immigrated to town from an area north of Florence called the Mugello in the early twelfth century.

By 1200 the population of Florence had grown to fifty thousand; in 1280 there were eighty thousand people living in the city and probably one hundred thousand by 1300. At the time London’s population numbered fifty thousand; Paris had two hundred thousand inhabitants, and Florence ranked together with her as one of the five largest cities in Europe. In 1284 Arnolfo di Cambio directed the construction of a new ring of city walls to accommodate the ever-growing population. The walls were finished in 1333, but in 1348 the plague, known as the Black Death, devastated the city, cutting its numbers in half. Small farms with open fields and orchards were to abound in large areas within the new walls well into the nineteenth century when the former population finally managed to catch up with itself.

The Medici

Guelph and Ghibelline differences came to a head with the defeat of the Ghibellines in 1267, and within a small group of Florentine merchants and Guelph sympathizers, the Medici began to make their way towards political and economic power. Except for a brief interim between 1494 and 1530, Florence was ruled, either behind the scenes or officially, by the Medici family for almost three hundred years between 1434 and 1743.

Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (1360-1429) paved the way for his descendents by building an influential banking empire, whose clients also included the pope. His oldest son Cosimo il Vecchio (the Elder) (1389-1464), also known as Cosimo il Pater Patriae (Father of his Country), managed to rule Florence informally through the influence of his economic position while never holding an important seat within the government. Patron of important architectural projects such as the Convent of San Marco and his own family palace near San Lorenzo, friend of famous artists like Donatello, founder of an academy devoted to the study of Plato, he was a true Renaissance man. His grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) carried on the family’s cultural traditions. A gifted poet and armchair architect, he also promoted the careers of aspiring young artists like Leonardo and Michelangelo.

Absolute Medici rule was not sealed in the fifteenth century with rival factions trying to seize their power. Cosimo had already been driven into exile in Venice before returning in 1434. Lorenzo the Magnificent nearly lost his life in 1478 in the Pazzi Conspiracy. His son, Piero, weak in character, was not able to sustain the brilliant reputation of his father and grandfather, and political ineptitude forced him to surrender the city to the French in 1494. Soon after, a republic was formed with the fanatic Dominican priest from San Marco, Savonarola, at its head. Urging the Florentines to throw their profane books, cosmetics, portraits of beautiful women, jewelry, playing cards, and dice into vanity bonfires, he led them to believe that their true leader was God. The Florentines, however, had little patience for this regime of austerity, and in 1498, Savonarola’s career was cut short when he was burned at the stake as a heretic in front of Palazzo Vecchio. The Republic was to linger on for another fourteen years until Lorenzo the Magnificent’s younger son, Giovanni, rode into Florence with the support of the pope to reclaim his inheritance and to restore Medici rule. Three years later, Giovanni returned as Pope Leo X (1475-1521), one of the most brilliant Renaissance papal patrons of art whose fine portrait by Raphael today hangs in the Uffizi.

When Rome was sacked by the troops of the emperor Charles V in 1527, anti-Medicean factions seized the opportunity to force the Medici once again into exile. Thanks to an alliance between Charles and another famous Medici Pope Clement VII (1478-1534), who, only three years earlier, had been driven out of Rome by the emperor, the Medici were allowed to return in 1530. Alessandro de’ Medici (1511-1537), reputedly Pope Clement’s illegitimate son, was nominated duke, and a marriage was arranged with the emperor’s daughter to solidify the new alliance. When the unpopular Alessandro was assassinated in 1537, supporters of the Republic saw their last chance to regain hold of the government slip away as power passed to Cosimo I (1519-74), descendant of a younger son of Giovanni di Bicci. When Cosimo I was granted the title of grand duke of Tuscany in 1569, the Medici dynasty was secured as power from then on was passed from father to son. Both successors of Cosimo I, his first son Francesco I (1541-87) to be succeeded by Ferdinando I (1549-1609), were important Medici rulers and patrons of art during the late Renaissance.

Transition

With the death of the last male Medici in 1737, rule was granted by treaty to the French House of Lorraine. The illuminated reign of the Lorraine grand duke Pietro Leopoldo (1765-1790) was outstanding for its reforms in agriculture, education, and health, and under his rule, Florence witnessed the abolition of the death penalty, the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, the creation of a chamber of commerce to replace the old guild system, and the opening of new schools for the education of the poor. With the rise of Napoleon, the Lorraine were expelled in 1799. Florence then became part of the Kingdom of Etruria and, for a short period, was ruled by Napoleon’s sister, Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, between 1809 and 1814. The Lorraine were then reinstated and, except for a brief interim, continued to govern until a few months before Florence became part of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy in 1860. From 1865 to 1870 Florence served as capital city of the new country and was home to her first king, Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878).

Florence in the Twentieth Century

Several tragic events were to mark Florentine history in the twentieth century. During the Second World War many of the transportable art treasures were taken into the Tuscan countryside for safekeeping, but not everything could be saved. In 1944, as they retreated from allied advance, the Germans destroyed all the city’s historic bridges, except for the Ponte Vecchio. To save it, the medieval streets on both sides of the bridge were reduced to rubble, and an astute eye will see today that most of the buildings at the lower part of Via Por San Maria and Via Guicciardini on either side of the bridge are modern constructions. On November 4, 1966, another tragedy struck the city. In the dark of the night, the waters of the Arno rose to six meters (19 ½ feet) above street level. Mixed with mud blacked by fuel oil used for heating, the raging waters spread throughout the city. Fourteen thousand people were left homeless, thousands of shops were put out of business, and countless works of art and historical monuments were damaged or destroyed as so eloquently testified by one of the famous survivors: Cimabue’s Crucifixion at Santa Croce. Another blow to the city’s cultural heritage came in 1993 when a Mafia bomb exploded behind the Uffizi, killing five people, destroying the historic library of the eighteenth-century Accademia dei Georgofili, and causing serious damage to the Uffizi and Vasari’s corridor.

The Renaissance: Art, Music,

Literature, and Science

Throughout her long history, the highlight of Florence’s cultural achievement remains her contribution to the Renaissance. With the revival of ancient Greek and Roman art and language, the Age of the Renaissance sparked off a new interest in classical studies in disciplines ranging from philosophy to architecture, mathematics to painting. Renaissance men like Cosimo de’Medici sent their agents throughout Europe and into the Near East seeking classical texts for their private libraries in monasteries which for centuries had preserved the ancient writings. The humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) translated all of Plato’s works into Latin and was director of the Platonic Academy, of which Cosimo de’Medici was also a founding member, devoted to the study of the Greek philosopher. Donatello (1386-1466), the sculptor, created new marvelously naturalistic statues, so lifelike that he once commanded one to speak. Brunelleschi (1377-1446), the architect, brought a new sense of order and harmony of proportion to Florentine architecture. Both their achievements were based on the direct observation of classical art as recounted by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his famous Lives of the Artists who described a trip to Rome made together by the two artists in the early fifteenth century to study the ancient ruins practically neglecting to sleep and eat . . . and leaving nothing unvisited . . . so great was their fascination with the ancient city. Masaccio (1401-1428) was the third link in bringing about similar revolutions in painting by successfully creating realistic representations of space, volume, structure, and three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional painted surface. In mentioning the Florentine Renaissance, one cannot overlook the importance of other Florentine artists: the sculptor Ghiberti (1378-1455), creator of the Baptistery gilded bronze doors known as the Gates of Paradise; the painters Fra Angelico (1400-1455) who decorated the Convent of San Marco and Botticelli (1455-1510) whose most famous paintings, the Birth of Venus and Primavera, were commissioned by members of the Medici family. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)