Pictures of my trip to Florence in November 2005

I arrived in the evening and wanted to have a look at the city right away and made some pictures. Here is the Ponte Vecchio from the side.

And on the 'ponte'

Florence still has practically the same density and narrow street pattern as during the late middel ages. It does not allow for a large number of cars but people still want their motorized transportation and scooters take up a lot less space both on the road and parked.

Human powered bicycles are less prevalent. I got the impression that the old city is small enough so that you can just as well walk but many people come into the city from further away than they would like to do on a bicycle.

Outside of the 'Duome'

And inside.

I did go up into the dome, the ay to that is in between outer and inner layer of the dome via a curved ascending set of stairwells.

From the top of the dome there is a marvellous view over the sea of red tiled roofs. I thought it was interesting to see that above the narrow and not so sunny streets, lots of nooks and crannies are used to get some sun on top of the buildings.

And the tradition of hundreds of years of building that seems impossible is still continued.

Here is a relief that puzzled me quite a bit. According to the discription is is taken off the Campanile, it was made by Andrea Pisano around 1335 but this is Daedalus, a figure from Greek mythology that was not supposed to be part of Western culture before the Renaissance. Do you have an idea what is going on here?