Italy Fermata 01: Firenze
Florence: many loud Americans looking at one giant lego
At some point all roads in Florence will lead you the Piazza del Duomo, where your jaw will drop and when you will lose your temporal coordinates. The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is a LEGO glitch in our matrix - it has been around for centuries, but it was built millennia into the future. The white marble, the texture, the pattern, the detail. For how long have, for how long will, visitors have their jaws drop when they come up in front of it marbleises and walk all around it.
But no matter when you think you are standing in front of it, it doesn’t take long for the present to come back flooding to your ears. You hear the American accent (and yours is close enough to it). It is everywhere. You hear it on all the centre city streets, in the queues for the galleries, on the Ponte Vecchio bridge where you can get your gold, on the Piazzale Michelangelo where you get a lovely view of the city. It is not a whisper, but the white noise of Florence’s city centre.
It is only when your feet take you further out, away from the centre, that you start hearing the other voices of Florence. Of the ones whose home this might be. I wonder if they lose their sense of time when they get to the Cathedral? But it takes a different kind of tourist to hear the real Florence of today.
