The first Sunday of every month starting from October to March is free museum day in Florence. We have all been patiently waiting for the opportunity to finally see some of the things that Florence is famous for. Because it was free museum day, the lines were a little longer and I was expecting that. But to my surprise, the lines were moving really fast and though we were only able to get to two museums in our day, the majority of our time was spent in the museums themselves rather than waiting in lines.
The first museum I went to was the Galleria Dell’ Accademia. This is the museum that houses the ever so famous David sculpture as well as the Rape of a Sabine Woman, other smaller sculptures, and many plaster casts of different works. We got to the museum around 11:30 and were in the museum by 11:45 at the latest. The line looked extremely daunting at the beginning but it moved so quickly and next thing we knew we were in the museum.
Museum culture in Italy is very different from America. I was immediately shocked at how lax their security is. I was allowed to carry my entire water bottle in with no issue and no one batted an eye when I had a backpack on. I was so surprised to see this seeing as the David sculpture is in that museum and that sculptures is one of the pride and joys of Florence. We looked at the artwork in the front room and slowly made our way to the David sculpture. I feel like I have studied and seen so many pictures of this sculpture that I would see it and just be like- OK this is what I was expecting. But seeing that sculpture in person was so breathtaking. Not just it’s height, but the attention to detail that was given to it. I saw all these little details I had never seen in any of the pictures I had looked at, and I have a new appreciation for the sculpture.
We then went to the Pitti Palace. This is the Medici house that is right across the street from our school. We have seen this every day since starting school and have been wanting to go inside and explore the palace and the gardens behind it for a long time. This line did take longer, but I was again surprised in how calm the environment in the museum was. I did not at any point feel like there were too many people around me taking pictures of everything. That could in part be because the palace is huge and we had a hard time imagining how anyone could live there and how many people were needed to maintain it. We walked through many rooms of artwork admiring the artwork along with the room itself. Each room was decorated so beautifully and it was so nice to see this style of a museum.
We then made our way out to the Boboli Gardens. Again, we were amazed by its size. These gardens would take days to go all around and actually appreciate. But we tried our best to go around as much as possible and promised to go back because we had completely fallen in love with the area. Having seen a lot of history just by walking around the city, going into the museums and getting more insight to the city as a whole has me wanting to see more and more and I cannot wait for my next free museum day to see even more of the great artwork that Florence has to offer!
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