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Pitti fashion shows inaugurate spectrum of summer events

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Lorenzo Picchi EDITOR: Caroline Oakland GR APHIC & L AYOUT DESIGN: Narine Nalbandyan, Ekaterina Chebotareva CONTRIBUTORS: Christine De Melo, Caroline Oakland, Lee Foust, Thomas Ricciotti, Costanza Menchi REGISTERED AT THE TRIBUNAL OF FLORENCE N. 6008, ON 9/12/2015.

PUBLISHER: Florence Service PRINT: ITS, Cavaglià (BI) Florence News is currently seeking outgoing and motivated candidates for its internship program. Interns will be exposed to all facets of weekly production, including news writing, photography, layout, advertising, public relations, circulation and graphic arts.

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ers to Florence for Pitti Uomo (June lorence is dressed in the col11–14), Pitti Bimbo (June 20–22), ors of fashion this summer as and Pitti Filati (June 26–June 28).

Pitti Immagine returns. ShowThe fairs take place at the Fortezza casing the latest in contemporary da Basso, but there will be events lifestyle trends, the series of trade 11 14once June 2019 throughout the whole city. fairs again bring top designFirenze Fortezza da Basso #pittiuomo pittimmagine.com #pu96

Under the artistic direction of its founders Marga Nativo and Keith Ferrone, the Florence Dance Festival returns this summer from June 30 to Aug. 3. Among the performers this year will be international dance star Sergei Polunim.

The Roman Theater at Fiesole hosts the Estate Fiesolana summer festival with live music, cinema, and dance from June 27. The city brims with energetic celebrations to commemorate the feast day of its patron saint John the Baptist on June 24. Best known for Calcio Storico Fiorentino, a barbarous combination of football, rugby and wrestling that pits the four quarters of the city against each other.

The anniversary also includes a rowing regatta on the Arno and the San Giovanni Nocturnal Run, which consists of a 10-kilometer competitive run and a four-kilometer walk that starts and finishes at the Piazza del Duomo on June 22. As night falls over the city on June 24, the legendary ‘fires of San Giovanni’, a pagan summer rite and now a modern pyrotechnic spectacle, set the sky alight over Piazzale Michelangelo.

Estate Fiesolana takes place at the historical Roman theater in Fiesole from June 20 throughout the whole summer. Opera aficionados can enjoy the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago from July 12 to Aug. 16. Blues lovers can also relish in the Pistoia Blues Festival, July 5-10, while the Lucca Summer Festival returns in July with a lineup of many international stars. Rock’n roll lovers can savor the annual Firenze Rocks. The festival is re-

turning to the Visarno Arena in the Parco delle Cascine June 13-16. Notable Italian composer and orchestra director Ennio Morricone will perform live at the Caracalla Baths in Rome in late June.

The most important event in Florence this month is without a doubt the celebration of the city’s patron saint St. John the Baptist, whose image was spread throughout Europe on the Florin, the Florentine coin introduced in 1252, and who was notably mentioned by Dante in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy. To get inside the heart of this Florentine feast day, the words of 19th century English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning are perhaps the most revealing. In a letter to her sister dated June 1847, Barrett Browning wrote: “Meanwhile, here is the grand Festa of San Giovanni, the patron saint of Florence, the grandest Festa of the year—and there are to be chariot races in the piazza close to us, and horse races (without riders) somewhere else—games in the manner of the ancients—also fireworks at night. The fireworks I certainly shall like to see: I couldn’t help screaming out for pleasure, and surprise. I never had seen any good fireworks, but Robert, who had, declared that nothing ever met his eyes to compare with these...and then the whole scene, the river, the people, the garden & characteristic houses contrived to throw one into a fit of ecstasy—it was my turn to be child, after all my fine reflection of the hour before… I cannot describe to you how marvelously beautiful it was.”

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A New Museum for Leonardo

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he Le Macchine di Leonardo Da Vinci museum has now a new exhibition space on Via del Castellaccio 1r. Much larger than its twin museum on Via Cavour 21 (that is still open and can be visited together with the new one with a combined ticket that costs €10), the new museum is inside the Sforza Almeni palace, right behind the Dome and built in the 16th century to a design by Bartolomeo Ammannati.

The new exhibition is now the largest in Florence dedicated to Leonardo. The two floors encompass about 300 machines of the Niccolai family built using Leonardo’s original drawings and projects.

The new space was designed to wel-

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Uffizi Opens Cinquecento Rooms

come families and children alike, who can now learn in an enjoyable way Leonardo’s secrets in the didactic labs of the museum.

Next to the museum labs, there is a space for video projections and a bookshop with a selection of international books on Leonardo Da Vinci.

The core of the exhibition is the display of reproductions of Leonardo’s machines, many of which are interactive and functioning. Explanations are available in English, French, Spanish. For those speaking other languages a detailed catalogue is available in Russian, German, Portuguese and Japanese.

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Via del Castellaccio 1r Ticket €7 (Discounts for families, students, seniors and groups are available. Find out calling + 39 055 20 29 901)

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fter a year, 105 paintings made

by Florentine and Venetian masters of the 16th and early 17th centuries have been rehoused in 14 renovated rooms of the Uffizi Gallery. Among the paintings on display in the new rooms, which are all located on the first floor of the museum and cover over 1,100 square-meters, are Titian’s Venus of Urbino and Federico Barocci’s Virgin of the People. Recent changes within the museum also include a new room devoted to Venetian

Naturalism and two rooms displaying works by Tintoretto and Veronese. The new room arrangement, which has also allowed for over 30 paintings to return on display, was designed to improve the visual appreciation and the understanding of each painting.

The colors of the rooms’ walls have been painted natural to give a more vibrant life to the paintings on display. The room displaying the Venetian painters is green, inspired by the drapery and wall hangings

of Venetian Renaissance paintings.

The room dedicated to the Tuscan painters is dark grey, echoing the Pietra Serena, the stone used for the construction of the Uffizi.

Protected by shatterproof glass ensuring a stable microclimate, the Venus of Urbino is now on display between the Flora (another painting by Titian) and Sebastiano del Piombo’s Fornarina. In the neighboring rooms, visitors can now admire the works of Lorenzo Lotto, Tintoretto, and Veronese. On this side of the Uffizi, a new window overlooks the Arno river, offering visitors a breathtaking view of Florence and its surrounding hills.

After ten years in storage, it is now possible to admire again Federico Barocci’s Virgin of the People, now on display next to another work by Barocci, the famous Noli Me Tangere.

Another work returned on display after restoration is Andrea Commodi’s Fall of the Rebel Angels, a bozzetto revealing a dramatic tangle of human anatomy in which Commodi seeks to vie with Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel.

“It is as though a second, new museum opened inside Uffizi. The undertaking was the result of outstanding teamwork by the Uffizi Gallery staff.

At long last we can display two sections of our collections, the painting of the Counter-Reformation as well as Venetian painting, which ranks among the most important such collections in the world, in the best possible way. In addition, the 16th century wing will be renovated in the coming months,” said Uffizi director Eike Schmidt.

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Leonardo and Florence

Exhibit on display at Palazzo Vecchio

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n May 2, 1519, five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci died in the French castle of ClosLucé. Until the very last day of his life, the Tuscan genius never quit to feel the deepest attachment to his home city of Florence. For his entire life, he kept calling himself a ‘Florentine painter’: Right before his death, he expressed the wish to be buried inside the ‘church of Saint-Florentin of Amboise.’ He wrote one of his last writings on June 24, 1518, the day of Florence’s patron saint, which was dedicated to the menagerie of lions behind

the Palazzo Vecchio.

It is in the name of this never-ending connection between the city and the artist that the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci and Florence: Selected Pages from the Codex Atlanticus has been produced. The exhibit, on display until June 24, showcases 12 of Leonardo’s handwritten folios, courtesy of the Milanese Biblioteca Ambrosiana,where the Codex Atlanticus is stored.

The codex has 1119 folios, writings, and drawings produced in the years between 1470 and 1519. It was published for the first time in

1884 and recently restored in 2008.

The twelve selected pages are the only ones of the codex that allude to Florence.

The first folio recites, ‘Sandro, you don’t say why such second-level things appear shorter than [those in] the third [level]’. This was most likely a criticism of the approach to the use of perspective in painting adopted by his friend, and rival, Sandro Botticelli, with whom Leonardo had shared his artistic formation in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop.

Another folio on display is a drawing that shows that Leonardo had seen up close the gold-plated copper ball that his master, Verrocchio, had placed on the lantern of the dome in 1471.

In Milan, Leonardo never lost contact with Florentine merchants, bankers and travellers. He acted as a liaison between the court of Ludovico Sforza and Florence, fulfilling a variety of tasks. Another of the displayed folios testifies in fact that he was asked to procure a text on the government of Florence, probably written by Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican preacher who established an ephemeral theocracy following the expulsion of the Medici before being excommunicated and burnt at the stake in 1498. Leonardo certainly met with him when he was consulted on the construction of the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio.

In 1500, after about 20 years, Leonardo returned to Florence, where he remained until 1503. On the day of his father’s death during this

JUNE www.florencenews.it second stay in the Tuscan capital, as one other displayed folio testifies, he deposited his savings in the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. In that same period, he also studied human anatomy through the dissection of corpses.

Another folio records the childhood memory of the ‘kite dream’ which has taken its place in the history of psychoanalysis for hav-

ing inspired Freud’s 1910 essay.

This revealed Leonardo’s passion for the study of flight. It was in the years of this second Florentine stay that Leonardo made his attempts to fly at Monte Ceceri, while also studying the hydrography of the Arno valley, which brought him to propose a change of the river’s

course by means of a canal that would simplify its winding path.

The ‘instructions’ for Leonardo’s The Battle of Anghiari, to be painted in the Palazzo Vecchio to rival Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina are impressed in one of the other exhibited folios. This painting was also Leonardo’s salute to Florence.

Shortly thereafter, in fact, he returned to Milan, in the service of the French. From Milan he then moved to Rome where at the court of Pope Leo X, he consolidated his relationship with the Medici family and particularly with Giuliano, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Two of the showcased folios testify of his ties to the Medici, which began in the final decades of the 1400’s under Lorenzo’s reign and continued, although not without tensions, with his descendants.

The exhibition closes with a painting that is somehow a counterweight to the drawings: the Busto del Redentore (a portrait of Jesus Christ), attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti, an artist known as Salaino, courtesy of the Milanese Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, to which the work was donated in 2013.

Leonardo da Vinci and Florence: Selected Pages from the Codex Atlanticus Palazzo Vecchio Until June 24

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Uffizi Tributes Cosimo I de’ Medici Three exhibitions dedicated to Florence’s first Grand Duke

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o mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Florence, the Uffizi Museum Complex presents three exhibitions until Sept. 29.

The first exhibition, One Hundred Lances for the Prince, tells the story of the Medici’s German guard corps – the ‘Guardia de’ Lanzi’ in Florentine patois – of halberdiers.

The exhibit is on display in the first floor of the Uffizi. This is no coincidence, as from the windows of the exhibition halls visitors can see the Loggia of Orcagna in the Piazza della Signoria, which was once the façade of the German guard corps headquarters in the Uffizi, and whose name Loggia dei Lanzi comes from an abbreviation of the German word Landsknecht.

The exhibition tells the story of the guard corps story from a social, cultural and military standpoint. Divided into four sections, it displays over 90 pieces including armour, weapons, costumes, engravings, paintings, documents and books recounting the corps and its history.

With the introduction of the Lanzi guards in Florence in 1541, Cosimo I also wanted to demonstrate his loyalty to the Habsburg Emperor Charles V.

The lancers, whose main function was to protect the sovereign and his closest relatives, played a crucial role in the context of the Medici court for almost 200 years, until 1738.

The exhibit also shows what has survived of Cosimo I’s own suit of armour and the splendid armour of Captain Fernberger with the Medici arms embossed on it from the Künsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

“The Medici Archive Project’s re-

Sottana della corte di Cosimo I | 1560 ca. | velluto unito di seta cremisi | Museo di Palazzo Reale, Pisa

search into the German halberdiers in Florence has led to the emergence of previously unknown information, bringing to light forgotten or unknown works of art, and offering a new interpretation of countless figurative documents of the era associated with the history of Florence in the time of the Lanzichenecchi,” said Uffizi director Eike Scmidt.

The second exhibition is entitled Weaving a Biography. 17th century tapestries in honor of Cosimo I and showcases nine majestic wool and silk tapestries hanging in the White Room and the Hall of Niches of the Pitti Palace that illustrate the key moments in the rule of the first Medici Grand Duke. It highlights the way in which, between 1653 and 1668, Ferdinando II de’ Medici interpreted the production of tapestries as a tribute to the founding father of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

The tapestries, which range from five to over eight metres in length, were originally devised for the Hall of Saturn in the Pitti Palace.

Arranged in chronological order, they tell the story of Cosimo I de’ Medici’s public life and his most significant achievements, from his rise to power to the consolidation of his rule over Tuscany, from the

Pugnale d’accompagno | 1570-1610 | acciaio, legno | Musei del Bargello, Firenze

architectural transformation of Florence to his relations with papal power and his foundation of order of chivalry.

Designed by painters and woven in the manufactory set up by the Duke, the tapestries were intended for display in a thoroughly Baroque triumph of decoration. They foreshadow the lavish splendour life of the greatest royal palaces in Europe.

The result was an apotheosis of Medici power embodied by Cosimo amid the gilding, stucco work of Giovan Battista Frisone and the frescoes of Ciro Ferri depicting The Ideal Prince Borne Aloft between Prudence and Valour towards Glory and Eternity. Eventually, only six of the eight tapestries woven were hung. The seventh and eighth in the series, dedicated to relations with the monarchies of Europe, are on display in the Hall of Niches to

give visitors an impression of the complete set.

The third exhibition, on display in the Hall of Niches of the Pitti Palace, showcases The Peasant with his Barrel, which is the very first statue ever carved for the Boboli Garden made by Giovanni di Paolo Fancelli to a design of his master Baccio Bandinelli sometime before 1557.

One Hundred Lances for the Prince Uffizi Gallery Weaving a Biography. The 17th century tapestries in honor of Cosimo I Pitti Palace The First Statue for the Boboli Garden.

The ‘Peasant’ Restored Pitti Palace Until Sept. 29

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Palazzo Strozzi Goes ‘Beyond Performance’ P

Palazzo Strozzi Tributes Verrocchio, Leonardo’s Master Exhibit runs until July 14

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alazzo Strozzi celebrates Andrea del Verrocchio, an emblematic artist of the Florentine Renaissance and Leonardo’s Master, with a major exhibition showcasing over 120 paintings, sculptures, and drawings coming from museums from all over the world.

The exhibition begins March 8, and the museums from which the artworks on display were borrowed include the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Uffizi Gallery.

The exhibition, which has a special section at the Bargello Museum,

brings together Verrocchio’s masterpieces and works by the most famous artists who did their apprentice in Verrocchio’s workshop, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Leonardo da Vinci for the first time. Thanks to loans and juxtapositions, the exhibit also reconstructs Leonardo’s early artistic career and interaction with his master. Curated by two leading experts in the art of the Quattrocento, Francesco Caglioti and Andrea De Marchi, Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo is one of the events taking place this year to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, and the first retrospective

ever devoted to Verrocchio.

Born Andrea di Michele di Francesco di Cioni, Andrea del Verrocchio was a Florentine painter, sculptor and goldsmith, who became known as Verrocchio after the surname of his master.

Verrocchio, The Master of Leonardo Palazzo Strozzi Open every day, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.

(Thursdays 10 a.m. – 11 p.m.)

Palazzostrozzi.org

alazzo Strozzi hosts Beyond Performance, a special project with site-specific works made by Cally Spooner, Mario García Torres, and the Opavivarà!

The project highlights three ways of revisiting the notion of performance as an interdisciplinary form of expression and experimentation in different contexts.

The Strozzina undercroft showcased the work of Cally Spooner and Mario García Torres until May 12.

Cally Spooner (United Kingdom, 1983) presented And You Were Wonderful. On Stage, a large video installation showing the making of a musical film in an ongoing alternation between stage and backstage.

The protagonist is a chorus that transforms a meeting taking place inside an advertising agency into a song citing Beyoncé and Justin Bieber, in what becomes an ironic reflection of how media and technologies can manipulate the reality in which we live.

Mario García Torres (Mexico, 1975) presented Falling Together in Time, an installation in which video, painting, music, sculpture and performance art interact in a space animated also by unexpected actions.

The installation recounts events

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and stories of 1980s Los Angeles’ popular and musical culture that randomly interweave and interconnect. This turns into a reflection on the synchronicities and coincidences of our lives.

With the installation Rede Social, a large and colorful hammock on which the public will be urged to climb, the Opavivarà! collective (Brazil, 2005) will turn the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi into an area of participation and involvement.

The objective is to have the public experience the space and architecture of the Palazzo Strozzi from a new, unconventional viewpoint devoid of any ‘hierarchy’.

The installation will be on display in the Palazzo Strozzi courtyard until July 14.

Beyond Performance.

Cally Spooner, Mario García Torres and Opavivará!

Palazzo Strozzi Monday to Friday 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. / 2-6 p.m. palazzostrozzi.org

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Leonardo and His Books The Library of the Universal Genius

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he exhibition Leonardo and His Books. The Library of the Universal Genius is on display from June 6 to Sept. 30 at the Galileo Museum. Through a selection of manuscripts and incunabula, the exhibition explores Leonardo’s relationship with books, the culture of his time, and the great authors who lived before him.

Computers at the museum will allow visitors to look through the genius’ digitalized books and manuscripts and to understand how he used them. For Leonardo, books

were not mere items, but also ‘machines’ of the human mind to be built or disassembled in order to discover their ‘mechanisms’ – their words, thoughts, and illustrations.

By the end of his life, Leonardo owned nearly 200 books, an astonishing number for a 15th-century artist-engineer.

A reconstruction of the workshop where Leonardo worked on his drawings, notebooks, and other writings will also be featured. In addition, thanks to a project by an international team of art history and history experts, all Leonardo’s books can be consulted in the Museo Galileo’s digital library, providing scholars with a formidable tool to study Leonardo.

The exhibition is organized by chronological order. It begins with the story of Leonardo’s encounter with the universe of books and the written word – Da Vinci family documents, the first books owned by the young Leonardo (works by Dante and Ovid), and books written by great masters of his time such as Alberti, Toscanelli, and Pacioli.

The illegitimate son of a young notary by the name of Piero, who lived and worked in Florence, Leonardo was brought up by his grandfather, a merchant by the name of Antonio, who recorded the child’s birth on the last sheet of a notarial

protocol of his father “ser Piero di ser Guido”. Perhaps that protocol – which was made up of a series of sheets of paper, folded, tied together, and covered with lines of small dark marks that his grandfather called “letters” and “writing” – was the first ‘book’ ever seen by Leonardo. We do not know if there were other books in that house, but we can reasonably assume that there was a small family library, a common characteristic of the houses of merchants, bourgeois, and notaries of that time.

Between the 14th and 15th centu-

ries, books were precious objects for Tuscan families. They were passed down from generation to generation and often displayed proud notes of possession and transmission to the heirs with the usual formula “This book belongs to [...] and to his descendants.”

Upon his arrival in Florence, Leonardo found himself in the heart of the district that had the greatest concentration of booksellers and stationers. Between 1467 and 1480, Ser Piero lived on the corner between Via delle Prestanze and Piazza San Firenze, had a studio in the Palazzo del Podestà, and maintained strong ties with the monks of the Badia. A few steps away, in the shadow of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, was Verrocchio’s workshop, where Leonardo was initiated into the arts.

In this area, right in the centre of the world of goldsmiths and metal workers, there were Florentine famous printers such as Bernardo Cennini and Filippo Giunta.

The first concrete evidence of books read by Leonardo can be found on an enigmatic sheet of the Codex Atlanticus (f. 195r-v): a series of short quotations from Luca Pulci’s Pìstole (Letters), Francesco Petrarca’s Trionfo d’Amore (Triumph of Love), and above all Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

A few years later, upon moving to

Milan, Leonardo decided to start writing and became an author himself (or, to use his own words, an “altore”). In this period, he began to search for, and buy, more books, which by now could spread more rapidly due to to the advancement of printing.

The Milanese shelf included 40 books, mostly of literature (both sacred and profane) and linguistics (manuals of grammar, rhetoric and style).

Leonardo was also an avid reader of poetry (the Acerba by Cecco d’Ascoli, the Quadriregio by Fed-

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erico Frezzi, the Morgante by Luigi Pulci, the Driadeo by his brother Luca, the Heroids by Ovid, Petrarch and Burchiello, and the misogynistic Manganello), as well as of short stories of every kind, from the great history (Livy, Justin, the Cronaca di Isidoro) to the anecdotes of the Vite de’ filosofi (Lives of the philosophers) and Poggio’s Facetiae to Aesop’s fables.

The shelf of Latin manuals on grammar, style and rhetoric and vocabularies included books such as the Rudimenta grammatices by Niccolò Perotti, Regulae latinae

by Francesco da Urbino, Regulae grammaticales by Guarino da Verona, Varietates sententiarus seu synonima by Stefano Flisco da Soncino, Exempla exordiorum by Gasparino Barzizza, Catholicon by Giovanni Balbi, Vocabulista ecclesiastico vulgare latino by Giovanni

da Savona, and the Elegantiolae by Agostino Dati.

Among the readings on religion were the De civitate Dei and Sermons of Saint Augustine translated into the vernacular, a book of sermons by Saint Bernardine of Siena, a Passion of Christ (perhaps

by Bernardo Pulci), a De tentatione, a Leggenda di santa Margherita, a Del tempio di Salamone, and the Vita e i miracoli del beatissimo Ambrogio.

As far as scientific and medical literature is concerned, Leonardo had books that were widely used in universities at his time as well as others such as the Tractatus de urinarum iudiciis by Bartolomeo Montagnana, the De natura humana by Antonio Zeno, the Anatomice sive historia corporis humani libri V by Alessandro Benedetto, to which is added also a “book of equine medicine”.

He also had Arab treatises on astrology, Albumasar and Alchabitius (translated in the vernacular by Francesco Sirigatto), an astrological booklet by Firman de Beauval (the De mutatione aeris), a “quadrant”, the Cosmography of Ptolemy, and technical-artistic books such as Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, Ludi mathematici and the lost De navi.

Leonardo and His Books Museo Galileo Piazza dei Giudici 1 June 6 – Sept. 22

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The Adoration of the Magi Explained

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eonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Adoration of the Magi recovered much of its original colouring after a painstaking 6-year long restoration last year, when it returned to the Uffizi after being taken to the Opificio Delle Pietre Dure institute in 2011 due to serious deterioration of the surface.

Displayed alongside Filippino Lippi’s replacement of the Adoration of the Magi from 1496, the painting is larger than two-square meters and is a chief example of Leonardo’s early work. It depicts the Vir-

gin Mary in the foreground with the infant Jesus, arranged in the artist’s signature triangular shape, surrounded by a semicircle of visitors; while in the background one observes a battle on horseback, a ruinous pagan building, the sketch of rocky landscape. In addition, according to some of the more controversial art historians, the young shepherd boy in the bottom right corner, facing away from the crowd, may be considered a self-portrait.

Commissioned by the Augustinian

monks of the church of San Donato a Scopeto to make an altarpiece, Leonardo abandoned the work when he moved from Florence to the court of Milan. Thus, the monks recruited Filippino Lippi to make a replacement. Lippi completed his version of the Adoration, now housed in the Uffizi, in 1496. A separate painting was made in 1488 by Domenico Ghirlandaio, who expanded upon Leonardo’s theme. In 2002, Dr. Maurizio Serracini, an art diagnostician and alumnus of the University of California - San Diego as well as a native Florentine, was commissioned by the Uffizi to undertake a study of the paint surface to determine whether the painting could be restored without damaging it. After using high-resolution digital scans as well as thermographic, ultrasound, ultraviolet, and infrared diagnostic techniques to study the painting in ultra-fine detail, Seracini concluded that the painting could not be restored without damaging it and that Leonardo only did the underdrawing. Another artist, or other artists, was responsible for all of the existing paintwork on top of the underdrawing. “None of the paint we see on the Adoration today was put there by Leonardo,” said Seracini. The new images revealed by the diagnostic techniques used by Seracini were initially made public in 2002 in an interview with New York Times reporter Melinda Henneberger. In 2005, nearing the end of his investigation, Seracini gave another interview, this time to The Guardian. The final result were published in 2006.

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10 Florence News

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A

Ten Commandments For Tourists

group of 50 local tour guides transcribed a series of rules for tourists in Florence, which hit the headlines of local media last month. The initiative, called “l’Armata pacifica” (literally, The Peaceful Army), came last year shortly after Mayor Dario Nardella took measures to prevent tourists from picnicking and camping in front of the city’s iconic churches

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Sisters in Liberty

by hosing down their steps. Summer, perhaps due to the severe heat, is surely the period of the year in which tourists most frequently misbehave. We have thus decided to take inspiration from this idea and rearrange the ten rules into commandments. Respectful tourists should obey them strictly, as if they had in fact come from the mouth of the almighty Lord above.

Thou shalt not crowd around the street vendors.

Thou shalt not feast barbarically by the churches, basilicas, or other sacred grounds.

Thou shalt not abandon your masses of rubbish on the streets.

Honor the sidewalks and streets with strolling, not with your luggage.

Thou shalt not ask for canals in Florence, for thou shalt not find them.

Honor the que for the taxi.

Thou shalt not gratuitously indulge in selfies in front of Palazzo Vecchio or other monuments .

Thou shalt not use the sidewalks as toilets or urinals.

Thou shalt not use the fountains as a shower.

Thou shalt not shout aggressively - even if intoxicated.

A

copy of Pio Fedi’s Freedom of Poetry statue, which is believed to have inspired Frederick Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, will be on display in New York City’s Ellis Island Museum of Immigration from Oct. 11, 2019, to April 26, 2020.

Although it is impossible to say with certainty that Bartholdi found his inspiration in Pio Fedi’s work as he was spending some time in Florence, “the two statues are sisters as they represent the

same ideal of freedom,” said exhibition curator Paola Vojnovic.

Pio Fedi’s sculpture was recently scanned in the highest possible resolution through a technique invented by a team of neuroscientists from Kent State University, Ohio.

The copy that will be exposed at the Ellis Island Museum will be prepared on the base of the scansion and therefore will be as tall and heavy as Pio Fedi’s original: three-meter high for a total weight of 250 kilograms.

The project is part of the celebrations of the bicentennial of the US consulate in Florence and is also meant to reinforce the good relationships between Tuscany and the United States.

The Statue of Liberty was given to the United States by the French government as a way to acknowledge the friendship between the two countries which had been established during the American Revolution. It represents Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Bartholdi was commissioned to ultimate the sculpture by 1876, while the creator of the Eiffel Tower, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, was given the task to design the supportive structures allowing the statue to stand upright.

In 1885, nearly 10 years after its planned completion, the statue was brought to the New York and still acts as a sign of freedom for the nation.

Pio Fedi’s statue is placed on the left side of the entrance to the Basilica of Santa Croce and is currently undergoing works of maintenance. Like the Statue of Liberty, the memorial depicts a female figure draped in robes representing the Liberty of Poetry. Both sculptures share similar crowns and poses, with the right arm pointing up and the left arm resting at the side. While the Statue of Liberty holds a torch in the right hand and a tablet in the left, Fedi’s work holds a broken chain in the right hand and a lyre and laurel wreath in the left hand.

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Hallelujah Toscana Photographs by Marco Paoli

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s part of the celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the Istituto degli Innocenti, the Museo degli Innocenti hosts the exhibition Hallelujah Toscana by photographer

by Marco Paoli. The exhibit runs until Sept. 10, is curated by artistic director of the Museo Novecento, Sergio Risaliti, and is accompanied by poems written by Alba Donati.

Hallelujah Toscana recounts an unacknowledged, misunderstood

Tuscany made up of contradictions, nuances, and beauties that lie outside the classic iconography of the region. In Paoli’s journey, made of 30 black and white photos, Tuscany becomes in fact a place that is at once ancient and contemporary, fascinating and romantic, painful and mysterious.

“Through this journey, I have discovered marvels and splendours hidden to most people, a glorious pasts buried and forgotten, made of ruins, remains, splendid buildings abandoned and neglected, where the traces of human presence are lost and where nature is the sole, undisturbed protagonist.

Hallelujah is a hymn, a simple exclamation. Sometimes sarcastic, perhaps polemical,” says Marco Paoli.

Thanks to the collaboration with poetess Alba Donati, a Tuscan native too, Paoli’s images become even more eloquent.

“Alba manages to go beyond what the ‘blind eyes’ of a photographer can glimpse. With her poems, she traverses the purely visual surfaces of my photographs, and gives them a voice,” Paoli says.

In Paoli’s photographs, human presence is deliberately absent. Inhabited by silent, moss-clad sculptures, there are instead spectral views of villas and gardens, such as Villa Corsini in San Casciano, Villa Mansi in Lucca, and Villa Gar-

Florence News 11

NEWS zoni in Collodi. There is the Parco di Celle, with its contemporary art works, the bright marble of the Carrara quarries, and the Fonte delle Fate in Poggibonsi, with the floating crocodiles and curled up bodies of Mimmo Paladino; there is the prison on the island of Pianosa, the Cisternone and Terme del Corallo in Livorno, the Fucecchio Marshes, the San Marco Church in Florence, the abandoned factories along the Lombricese mountain stream above Lucca, the Giogana of Camaldoli, the former Banti Mental Asylum in Pratolino, and the Pinti Cemetery in Florence.

All the images on display are surrounded by what Paoli calls a “silent melancholy” and reveal the hidden emotions that only an unspoilt landscape can provide.

Born in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa in 1959, Paoli lives and works in Florence. His projects include the Amazonlife Project and the documentation of the Busajo project in Soddo, Ethiopia, in support of street children.

Hallelujah Toscana Museo degli Innocenti Piazza SS. Annunziata, 12 Open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Until July 28

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Fiesole Commemorates Its Anti-fascists

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he city of Fiesole presents an exhibition celebrating the Monument to the Three Carabinieri, an imposing bronze sculpture created in 1964 by Marcello Guasti for the town’s new panoramic terrace designed by architect Giovanni Michelucci.

The work was made in honor of three carabinieri - Alberto La Rocca, Vittorio Marandola and Fulvio Sbarretti - who helped anti-fascist partisans in the fight against the occupying German troops during the Second World War. The Nazis killed the three in the summer of 1944.

The exhibit, titled Marcello Guasti, Giovanni Michelucci, and the Monument to the Three Carabinieri, begins on Feb. 17 in the Sala Costantini. The first part of the exhibition is called “The Genesis of the

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Tony Cragg on Display at Boboli Gardens

Monument: ‘The Leap towards the Infinite.’” The second part, called “Guasti and his Contemporaries: A Dialogue with the Antique”, will begin in May. The exhibit runs until Sept. 30.

With this event, Fiesole commemorates the three antifascist heroes while also paying homage to Giovanni Michelucci, one of the most important Florentine architects of all times, and Marcello Guasti, one of the most acclaimed Florentine sculptors of the postwar period, who died last January.

W

ith their layered, fragile, organized fabric and their primordial force, Tony Cragg’s monumental sculptures offer an unexpected, complex dialogue with the nature and beauty of the Boboli Gardens and the city of Florence.

The exhibition Tony Cragg at Boboli Gardens, on display at the Boboli Gardens from May 5 to Oct. 27, presents 16 works by English contemporary sculptor Cragg made from 1997 to the present day.

With their imposing and poetic presence Cragg’s sculptures accompany visitors on a journey of amazement and knowledge which provides a new interpretative key to both sculptures and their surrounding space. It is almost as if the unexpected plastic forms

on display suddenly revealed the energy and irrepressible underground force of the surrounding hills: familiar and comforting views that have been ‘disciplined’ by architects and gardeners over the last five centuries.

The role that Tony Cragg gives to his sculptures is precisely this: the emerging of new meanings, dreams and languages from an incessant and restless exploration of matter and their relationship with the environment.

“This is the first time that a main Italian museum has dedicated a monographic exhibition to Tony Cragg - said director of the Uffizi Galleries Museum Complex, Eike Schmidt, when presenting the exhibit at a recent press conference.

“The Boboli Gardens, with their

natural wonders, works of ancient art and highly rational structure, are the perfect theatre for this exhibition. In fact, the theme of sculpture in the park, central to the artist’s poetics, necessarily includes forms inspired by nature and its mysterious power, created

by Cragg to provoke a strong reaction in the observer, whether it be pure emotion or intellectual interpretation.”

Born in Liverpool in 1949, since 1977 Cragg lives and works in Wuppertal, Germany, not far from the Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, a lively exhibition center dedicated to contemporary sculpture created by Cragg himself in 2008. Active on the art scene since the late 1970s, Cragg has exhibited in many of the most important galleries, museums and parks around the world and has participated in major contemporary art exhibitions such as Documenta and the Venice Biennial. He also teaches at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin. He has received several prestigious awards and honors including the Turner Prize (1988), Shakespeare Prize (2001), and the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture (2007).

Tony Cragg at Boboli Gardens Boboli Gardens Until Oct. 27

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and Costas Tsoclis

Il Ponte Presents Carlo Battaglia...

T

he contemporary art gallery Il Ponte presents a solo exhibition of Carlo Battaglia’s paintings from May 17 to July 19. The exhibit showcases 15 works made between 1969 and 1979.

Battaglia’s work from this decade represents the climax of the socalled “New Painting” movement, underscoring the distinctive characteristic of those Italian artists who found themselves in this field at the time.

In a period when painting was considered too traditional, Battaglia and his contemporaries worked to find a new place for their medium in the changing art world. Based on an analysis of his artistic process and materials—paint, canvas, and frame—Battaglia focused his attention on the expressive potential of the medium itself.

His art is aimed at creating the world in which he felt immersed.

“His representation is not imitation: the second term is negative, the first constitutes the great tradition of painting. “All of his paint-

ings are always and only aimed at creating the world in which he felt immersed,” wrote art critic Marco Pelluzzo in his 2014 Carlo Battaglia.

Catalogo Ragionato.

After travelling around Europe to see German, French, and British contemporary artists at work, Battaglia made his way to America to see firsthand the art that captivated him.

He arrived in Manhattan in 1967 and spent six months living and working with key artists of the New York School such as Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhart, and Robert Motherwell. These influences can be seen in his abstract paintings made in the late 1960s. In these largescale works, Battaglia uses a dark, muted palate and sharp angles that reflect the shapes and colors of the dense cityscape of New York, while also closely referencing Ad Reinhardt’s striking yet nuanced studies of abstract geometric forms. His paintings from this period show him playing with and beginning to question the distinction between

abstraction and figuration.

At the 1970 Venice Biennale, Battaglia exhibited his Maree (“Tides”) series, formally introducing the theme that would come to dominate his oeuvre: the ocean. These early seascapes are long planes of variegated color that closely reference Rothko’s transcendent color field paintings that Battaglia saw in New York.

Though his works of the 1970s and ‘80s can be read more easily as seascapes compared to his early Maree paintings, all of Battaglia’s work comes from a theory wherein abstraction and figuration are decided in the conception of a painting, rather than its execution: “an abstract image,” wrote Battaglia in 1976, “can be represented in exactly the same way as a natural image.”

This lack of distinction, coming from his time with the Abstract Expressionists as well as his work within the Pittura Analitica movement, can be seen in his large paintings from the late 1980s, in which he uses color and expressive brushstrokes to manipulate the

Carlo Battaglia May 17 - July 19 Galleria Il Ponte Via di Mezzo, 42/b 055 240617 ww.galleriailponte.com

The contemporary art gallery Il Ponte presents the exhibition Nothing by Costas Tsoclis. The exhibit, on display until June 28 in the lounge space of the gallery, showcases five works made by Tsoclis in 2011.

Considered as one of the most famous Greek artists of the first postwar generation, Tsoclis got to know contemporary art trends as they were being born and formed; yet, his work represents none of them, though it carries hints of conceptual art, nouveau réalisme, and pop art.

His works have been showcased in major exhibitions all over the world including the Paris Biennale (1963, 1965), Sao Paulo Biennale (1965), and Documenta (Kassel, 1975).

Tsoclis also represented Greece at the 1986 Venice Biennale.

Born in 1930 in Athens, Tsoclis studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1948-54). In the late 1950s, he lived and worked in Rome thanks to a scholarship from the State Scholarships Foundation.

He then moved to Paris, where he

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remained until 1976, but also spent some time in Berlin with a DAAD scholarship (1971) and Athens.

In his earlier periods, his art had expressionistic influences. At the same time, his experimentation with elements like sand, cement, marble dust and coal added a unique aesthetic to his creations.

During the years between 1963 and 1965, Tsoclis gradually added the third dimension to his canvases, although his compositions were still characterized by a painterly approach.

The issue of materials, and more specifically the dynamic relationship between form and space, was introduced in his work during his formative years. As time passed, the materials that he used became more elemental and his approach to his art more laconic.

Costas Tscoclis. Nothing Il Ponte Via di Mezzo 42b galleriailponte.com Until June 28

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Florence News 15

NEWS

The Three Tenors and La Traviata at Santo Stefano Church accompanies the music, as one would expect in a traditional opera house. If you’ve never seen La Traviata, do a bit of research beforehand. It will make the experience far more enjoyable. Dancers at La Traviata show are from the Florence Dance Performance school.

Choreography is by Donatella Cantagallo.

C. DE MELO

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oasting an original Romanesque facade of green and white marble, the Santo Stefano Church now serves as an auditorium for musical and theatrical performances.

The concert is inspired by the world-renowned ‘Three Tenors’ Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras.

Standing atop Buontalenti’s stunning marmoreal balustrade of 1574 and accompanied by a chamber ensemble of mandolin, doublebass and grandpiano, Mattia Nebbiai, Claudio Sassetti, and Leonardo Sgroi dazzle audiences with their incredible voices. The excellent acoustics in Santo Stefano require no microphones.

The three tenors perform masterpieces which brought internatiol fame to Italy’s music, such as some of the arias from La Traviata, Rigoletto and Tosca, as well as some of the most famous Neapolitan traditional songs.

The musical program includes several operatic pieces from Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Brahms, and De Curtis. The singers are accompanied by the flawless tunes of a grand piano, mandolin, and a double bass. The three tenors exuded tremendous energy and playfulness on stage, making the audience giggle at times with their delightful humor. Their velvety

voices kept a full house entranced for over an hour with each selected song showing off the full potential of their collective talent. One highlight was the aria, E lucevan le stelle from the opera TOSCA, written by Giacomo Puccini. The emotion and range of this performance was truly impressive.

“La traviata last night was a failure.

Was the fault mine or the singers’?

Time will tell.”

Those words were penned by Giuseppe Verdi to a friend the day after La Traviata premiered at Venice’s La Fenice in 1853.

La Fenice’s manager had insisted on giving the leading role of “Violetta” to Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, a corpulent 38-year-old woman.

Although she was an acclaimed singer, the audience openly jeered at her for attempting to portray a young courtesan dying of con-

sumption. One can only imagine Verdi’s utter frustration and disappointment.

“The Fallen Woman” (La Traviata) was written as a tragic three act opera based on a play, which was taken from the French novel “The Lady with the Camellias” by Alexandre Dumas (author of “The Three Musketeers”). The plot is simple: forbidden love.

Violetta, a Parisian courtesan, falls in love with Alfredo, a young bourgeois from the countryside. Alfredo’s father, Giorgio, is against the relationship due to Violetta’s dubious past and convinces her to break off the love affair. Alfredo is furious and humiliates her in public. When Violetta is on her deathbed, she reconciles with Alfredo. Giorgio apologizes to her before she takes her final breath. Naturally, the music and lyrics are infused with emo-

tion to lift the soul of the listener.

To experience Verdi’s timeless work in any venue is a visual and auditory delight, but Santo Stefano is a special place. The earliest mention of this Romanesque style church dates back to 1116. The original 12th century facade is comprised of white marble from Carrara and green marble from Prato. The interior was revamped in the 17th century to convert three aisles into an open space. Finally, Santo Stefano boasts wonderful acoustics.

The church does not have a stage but a high altar with a stone balustrade along the front. The opera performed at this venue is mainly for listening pleasure, consisting of three talented singers – a tenor, a baritone, and a soprano – two talented musicians (grand piano, double bass), and four dancers. No elaborate theatrical performance

June Events June 4-7-11-14-18-21-25-28 The Three Tenors Auditorium Santo Stefano 8:30 p.m.

June 6-13-20-27 Traviata Auditorium Santo Stefano 8:30 p.m.

INFO & BOOKING: www.operainroma.com Email: florence@operainroma.com Cell: +39 373 774 6001 Landline: +39 055 230 2411

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Florence News 17

HISTORY

Understanding the Roots of Fashion from the Renaissance COSTANZA MENCHI

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n the early 1930s, Italian writer Gianna Manzini noted that the renowned Bronzino’s portrait of Eleanor of Toledo with her son, Don Garzia, acts as “a program, a prophecy,” the document of an epoch. It is, in fact, in the Renaissance that we can find the first manifestation of a “discourse on dress” and a ‘rhetoric’ of ‘la bella figura’ (literally: beautiful figure, meaning: giving a good impression). Thus, the Renaissance is the key moment in history for understanding the roots of Italian fashion.

In the Renaissance, fashion became scientia habitus and a political and a state affair via the Sumptuary Laws. In the 16th century, numerous authors such as for example Baldassare Castiglione and Cesare Vecellio expressed an existing concern for appearance. The body became a vital component of identity . Beginning with the members of the Medici family, high status people began to see themselves as the ‘agents’ of their own fate.

The act of “fashioning” had connotations different from modern ones. Clothes were to transform the wearer as elegant dressing gave people a form.

In the mid-16th century, Cosimo de’ Medici became the first duke

of florence and his wife Eleanora the duchess of the city. From Eleanora’s wedding dress of 1539 to her burial dress of 1562, the Spanish-born duchess wore ceremonial that had the effect to advertise both the Florentine silk industry and Duke Cosimo’s loyalty to Spanish Emperor Charles V. So far, we have identified some of the early meanings of modern fashion. One of the most important of these meanings is that in the Renaissance dressing also became a way of advertising and communicating an identity.

Our primary evidence for Cosimo and Eleanor’s newly achieved ducal status is portraiture. Florentine painter Agnolo Bronzino under-

stood the importance of dress in crafting Eleanor’s public persona, and for this reason he made the virtuoso depiction of clothing and jewels (some of them attributed to Cellini) central to his four portraits of her in ceremonial dress. In these portraits, Bronzino depicts Eleanor as an icon of Spanish nobility and, together with her two eldest sons, as a symbol of a fecundity at the base of the Medicean dynastic ambitions. Thus, just as Eleonora’s public appearances in lavish dress were carefully staged, Bronzino’s images of her in this clothing were part of Duke Cosimo’s political culture, in which he presents his duchess as he wished her to be seen. In these portraits, Eleanora, Cosimo, and the members of the Medici family were not just showing off their refined style and taste, but also the richness and the power achieved by the city of Florence.

Through their wardrobe, they adopted different ways and tricks by means of which ideas, ideology and power could be conveyed through appearance.

Florentine heirs of that tradition are still recognized worldwide for the superb “Made in Italy” fashion, textiles, leather goods, jewels and accessories, which still let people wearing them make aa good impression during public and private occasions.

The ‘Supermodels’ of the Past T

hrough Renaissance portraits of women it is possible to understand how modern fashion began. It was during this period, in fact, that for the first time in art history, women became the object of a somewhat obsessive attention to the details of beauty. Artists began focusing intently on women’s faces, hair and clothes, and thus female portraiture took on another expressive element, beyond representing personality and social status.

Simonetta Cattaneo can be considered the first “supermodel” in history, as Botticelli used her as a muse and inspiration for his paintings. Born in Genoa, she married Mario Vespucci, cousin of Amerigo Vespucci who baptized America.

In 1475 she was nominated “Queen of Beauty” at the popular chivalrous tournament known as La Giostra, which that year was won

by Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Giuliano and Simonetta embarked on a love story which came to a tragic end in 1476. She was only 22 when she died of tuberculosis. Giuliano died a few years later in the Pazzi Conspiracy.

Simonetta’s face is believed to appear in The Birth of Venus and the Madonna of the Magnificat at the Uffizi. Hers and Giuliano’s are believed to be the faces in Botticelli’s Primavera, or Allegory of Spring.

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (fragment)

Another Renaissance model was Lucrezia Panciatichi. In Bronzino’s portrait she appears with a “complicated” hairstyle, blue eyes and a melancholic expression; she wears a sumptuous red velvet dress and a corset trimmed with a belt made of precious stones. One of her two necklaces bears the inscription “Amour dure sans fin,” an allusion to the love of God, whilst her right hand holds a prayer book. The sleeves of the dress are big and detachable, as it was common in that period.

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A Summer Under the Stars M

With Uri Caine and Ennio Morricone

usic lovers will have the opportunity to watch two of the greatest living musicians this summer: Ennio Morricone will perform in Lucca on June 29, and Uri Caine will play live on July 18 at the Umbria Jazz Festival.

Morricone recently celebrated his 90th birthday, his concerts this summer will probably be the last

live performances of his life. This month, the composer and orchestra director will also play four concerts at the Roman Baths of Caracalla (on June 15, 16, 21, 22), in which he will perform music from his entire career directing an orchestra of more than 200 musicians.

“Finally and after a long time I was

able to conduct concerts in several European capitals. The energy of the public gives me the greatest force, now I’m in perfect physical shape,” said Morricone.

In his career, Morricone has composed over 500 music scores for television and film and has won numerous awards. Featured in 30 award-winning films, his scores have also been included in symphonic and choral pieces. He attended the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, where he took trumpet lessons, and began his professional career after graduating in 1946.

Caine will perform his show called Seven Dreams in Perugia at the Morlacchi Theatre. Peforming with Caine on stage will be Mark Elias, Clarence Penn, the Umbria Jazz, and

the Perugia Orchestra da Camera.

Born in Philadelphia in 1956 and based in New York since the mid1980s, Caine has achieved a worldwide reputation thanks to his open-minded attitude, completely in harmony with the complexity of the time. A jazz musician at heart, he grew up listening to, and drawing inspiration from, the major exponents of jazz, rhythm’n’blues and soul scenes of his native Philadelphia. At the same time, he also fulfilled classical studies with master composers like George Rochberg and George Crumb at Penn State University.

Caine’s encyclopedic piano style spans from ragtime and stride to modal and post-bop, Herbie Hancock being one of his major influences.

In his career, Caine also reworked excerpts from classical authors such as Mahler, Wagner, Schumann, Bach, Beethoven and Verdi, and composed several contemporary works for orchestra, ensemble, and string quartet.

Firenze Rocks

Festival features Smashing Pumpkins, Ed Sheeran and The Cure among others

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irenze Rocks returns to Florence this month. The event takes place at the Florence Visarno Arena June 13-16, tickets can be purchased online through the link http://bit.ly/ firenzerocks2019.

The festival begins on June 13 with performances by Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Skinred, and Badflower. On Friday, June 14 Ed Sheeran, Snow Patrol, Zara Larsson, and Matt Simons will perform. Eddie Vedder

and Glen Hansard will be on stage on June 15. The event will end on June 16 with concerts by The Cure, Sum 41, and Editors.

Firenze Rocks started in 2017 and has been attended by 350,000 rock lovers. International stars that have participated to the festival include Guns ‘N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, and System of A Down.

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Pitti Uomo Presents ‘Special Click’

itti Immagine Uomo, the global trade fair dedicated to menswear and contemporary lifestyles, returns to Florence June 11-14. Every year, the fair, which takes place at the Fortezza da Basso, presents a world of styles, ideas, and projects that reflect the newest fashion trends.

This summer Pitti Uomo features select lifestyles focusing on cutting-edge fashion research with an emphasis on forward-thinking fashion.

Projects that will be showed include outdoor fashion that rep-

CITY BEAT

News @ Pitti Uomo 96 Debuts, Premieres, and Highlights:

resents the athleisure high fashion wardrobe of contemporary artisans.

Pitti Uomo will show the best of the best new classics, sportswear brands, luxury streetwear, and others by bringing a new generation of stylists from Northern Europe and Asia. The theme of the fair will be The Pitti Special Click. Why? Because something special ‘clicks’ into place every six months at Pitti, with new projects, events, and international names.

Every year, the fair produces always new vibes, energy and emotions.

The BasicNet Group Presents BasicIcons BasicIcons is the novelty that the BasicNet Group brings to Pitti Uomo at the Padiglione delle Ghiaie.

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veil its S/S 2020 collection.

Closed x Société Anonyme Florence’s coolest concept store Société Anonyme meets Closed – a contemporary design brand with a uniquely creative DNA. Jeckerson Presents its Racing Project The renowned Italian brand will present the new S/S 2020 collection with important news related to the iconic Toppa.

Coin Excelsior Coin Excelsior, dedicated to premium brands, is the contemporary department store that offers a new look at the world of contemporary fashion and lifestyle, thanks to the well curated selection of Italian and international brands.

Moon Boot to Launch its First Summer Collection Moon Boot presents its first ever Spring/Summer footwear collection.

The New Path of Bikkembergs With its brand reboot already underway for several seasons thanks to new creative director Lee Wood, the company uses Florence to un-

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Piazza Nazario Sauro 23R | www.mmega.it

ph Emilio Tini

A | X Armani Exchange “In 1991 I had an intuition, I called it A|X. Looking at the reality of the street, before it became just another vogue, I created fast, affordable metropolitan clothing for the young generations and those with a young mindset. This spirit still exists today in apparel and accessories that speed forward to an urban drum keeping the quintessential effortlessness and the active stance of the GA DNA.” - Giorgio Armani Karl Lagerfeld to Showcase Collections at Pitti Uomo Accompanied by a live performance by London-based artist Endless, the brand will tribute Karl Lagerfeld and celebrate his legacy of creativity.

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Florence News 19

THE GUCCI GARDEN WITH A NEW GALLERY SET-UP 11 14 June 2019 On June 11 #pittiuomo Gucci will inaugurate Firenze Fortezza da Basso pittimmagine.com #pu96 the new layout of the Gucci Garden Gallery inside the historic Palazzo della Mercanzia in Piazza della Signoria. special grant from

THE FIRST OFFICIAL CR SHOW AND THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF LUISAVIAROMA Fashion visionary and founder of CR Fashion Book and CR Studio, Carine Roitfeld will present her first CR Runway official fashion show. Carine will join Andrea Panconesi, CEO of LuisaViaRoma, in the celebration of the 90th anniversary of LuisaViaRoma on June13.

Created with his son and business partner Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, the opening show will be based on a 1990s themed show with a performance of Lenny Kravitz.

Lungarno Torrigiani 33B | www.cristianfenzi.com

instagram @cristianfenziofficial

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

Calcio Storico Honors Patron Saint

Florence News 21

CITY BEAT

covered in sand, doubly long as it is wide, with net goals at each end.

Each team has 27 players: 4 Datori Indietro (goalkeepers), 3 Datori Innanzi (fullbacks), 5 Sconciatori (halfbacks), and 15 Innanzi or Corridori (forwards). The game starts when the "Pallaio" throws the ball to the center line, followed by the firing of a small cannon, announcing the beginning of the conflict.

From this moment on, the players attempt to get the ball into the opponent's goal. The teams change

sides with every point scored.

Tactics such as head-butting, punching, elbowing and choking are allowed, although the modern version forbids sucker punches and kicks to the head. Players continue to play despite any injuries they may incur, as there are no substitutes. Many players boast that they would rather die on the field than in the hospital. The Captain and Alfiere (flag bearer's) tent sits in the center of the goal net. They don't actively participate in the game,

Calcio Storico in brief

Foto credits: Flickr user Francesca Romana Correale

A

s a part of the celebration of Florence’s patron saint, John the Baptist, the Calcio Storico Fiorentino is held annually in June, a tradition dating back to the sixteenth century that puts the four districts the Romans divided Florence into head-to-head in a game that mixes football, rugby, and wrestling.. This game was invented by the Romans to train their troops and conserved by Florentines, who still play it every year in the Piazza Santa Croce.

The sport originates from the traditional game played over 500 years ago, and the ancient rules are still observed. Before each game a procession of drummers, flag-bearers, team members and other Florentines, all dressed in sixteenth-century Renaissance attire, parade from Piazza Santa Maria Novella to Piazza della Signoria, through Via dei Neri and Via dei Benci and on to the field of play, Piazza Santa Croce. Matches last 50 minutes and are played on a field

Pancakes Ice Cream

Frozen Yogurt

Muffin Cakes

Santa Maria Novella (Reds): Northwest quadrant of the city Basilica of Santa Maria Novella Banner: Golden sun Gonfalons of company: White Lion, Lion Red, Viper, Unicorn

Holy Cross (Blues): Southeast quadrant of the city Basilica of Santa Croce Banner: Golden cross Gonfalons of company: Ox, Black Lion, Wheels, Tow

St. John (Greens): Northeast quadrant of the city Baptistery of San Giovanni Banner: Depiction of the Baptistery Gonfalons of company: Keys, Vaio, Green Dragon, Golden Lion

Holy Spirit (Whites): Southwest quadrant of the city Basilica of the Holy Spirit Banner: White dove Gonfalons of company: Shell, Ladder, Lash, Dragon

Cookies

Saturday, June 15: Verdi San Giovanni (Greens) vs.

Rossi Santa Maria Novella (Reds) Sunday, June 16: Azzurri Santa Croce (Blues) vs.

Bianchi Santo Spirito (Whites) Final match: June 24 All matches begin at 5 p.m.

Tickets are available exclusively at the Box Office, via delle Vecchie Carceri 1

You can find Calcio Storico shirts at Deep Italian Apparel Via dei Neri 86R

Centrifuges

Coffee

but act as referees along two “side judges” per district, making eight total. The Maestro di Campo is “Master” of the game and ensures it runs smoothly, stepping in to reestablish order and maintain discipline in case of a fight on field.

The team which scores the most cacce (points) wins. Historically, the winners are awarded a white calf to represent the “sweet taste of victory.” Today, the victorious team wins a calf’s equivalent weight in mouth-watering bistecca fiorentina. The pageant of Calcio was prohibited for a period in 1739 by the Grand Dukes of Lorraine, but was restarted by the Fascist government which came to power in the 1930s.

Crepes Waffles

We'll see you in Piazza Gaetano Salvemini n°2 Firenze ( Between S. Pierino Arch and Post Office Via Verdi )

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22 Florence News

CITY BEAT

Innovative Jewelry and Style

Meet Cristian Fenzi and his crew

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ristian Fenzi is a stylist and designer who has a past as an engineer and who started his own brand in 2013 as the culmination of an artistic path begun in 1980 with artist Fabio Gianni. His team is made of two more people who work together with him in the shop located on the Lungarno Torrigiani, a few steps away from the Ponte Vecchio, and the company’s laboratory on Via de’ Bardi, in the same Oltrarno neighborhood of Florence as the shop. They are artist and designer Fabio Gianni and goldsmith designer Paolo Gianni.

Over the past three years, the company has extensively expanded.

Cristian and Fabio’s artistic life did not follow the path of their families but their own passions. To design their lines of products, Cristian and Fabio get inspiration from the aesthetic and ironic sides of the animal world and the aesthetic of electronic circuits. Fun is definitely the leit-motiv of their collections, as jewels “must, first of all, amuse us since the very first moment when we begin producing them; consequently, they will do the same with the customers who wear them,”

says Cristian.

Cristian and Fabio believe that the distinctive characteristics of their creativity are “non-conventionality” and the constant research of new, innovative solutions and ideas. These characteristics are at the basis of a new approach to micro-sculpture. The principal productive techniques used by Cristian and his team are the blue wax sculpture and the lost wax casting, the materials mostly used for his creations are silver, bronze, gold, as well as steel and aluminum. Noticeble is a jewel of his ‘Classic Dark Side’ line created by Fabio Gianni in 2010 and now on permanent display at the Museo Degli Argenti at the Pitti Palace.

Cristian told us that there is one historical fact that more than any other has affected his profession: Ferdinando I de Medici’s 1593 decision to replace the butchery shops that were on the Ponte Vecchio with goldsmith shops. Ferdinando did not like the smell of meat. His decision had the effect to transform the streets near the bridge, which became home to many goldsmith’s workshops.

If you enter the Cristian Fendi shop on the Lungarno Torrigiani, you still can ‘smell’ what Tuscan jewelry production means. Ferdinando I de Medici would appreciate.

Cristian Fenzi Antigas e Co.

Lungarno Torrigiani 33b (near the Ponte Vecchio)

JUNE www.florencenews.it

Roberto Ugolini: Master Loafer

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uality and elegance. This is what you can find in a small shop next to Piazza Santo Spirito that carries on the antique tradition of designing and producing handcrafted shoes, primarily for male clients who want to wear the top quality.

The shop is that of Roberto Ugolini, a Florentine artisan famous in America and Japan for designing and manufacturing shoes based on the wishes of his customers and on the shape of their foot. The shop offers a wide range of solutions regarding shape, colors and materials.

Entering it you can ‘breath’ the air of an old tradition that today has be-

come a rare luxury.

The formula of Roberto is that of combining the best Florentine artisan traditions with the highest quality of materials.

Always with the same scope: quality and elegance.

Roberto Ugolini Via Michelozzi 27/r (next to Piazza Santo Spirito) www.roberto-ugolini.com

Via Ghibellina 178/r • 055 www.ristoranterubaconte.it Via Ghibellina 178/r • 0552645411 2645411 •• www.ristoranterubaconte.it

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

• June 19, 9 p.m.

SHAMEL PITTS BLACK HOLE International dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze • June 20, 7 p.m.

CRISTINA KRISTAL RIZZO VN SOLO VERSION Italian dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze • June 20, 9 p.m.

GIUSEPPE MUSCARELLO Italian dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze

• June 7, 9 p.m.

ANDRÉANE LECLERC E DANY DESJARDINS SANG BLEU International dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze • June 8, 9 p.m.

ANDRÉANE LECLERC E DANY DESJARDINS SANG BLEU International dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze • June 14, 7 p.m.

DAVIDE VALROSSO A PEACEFUL, PEACEFUL PLACE International dance Chiostro del Vecchio Concentino-Officina Creativa Firenze | IT, Firenze

• June 14, 9 p.m.

HEMABHARATHY PALANI | GIANNI MAROCCOLO PERPETUO Dance and music Secret place, the place of the event will be communicated upon confirmation of the reservation to be made by telephone 055 351599 or via email teatrodanza@fabbricaeuropa.net

• June 21, 9 p.m.

GIUSEPPE MUSCARELLO Italian dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze • June 21, 9 p.m.

BARBARA BERTI BAU#1 Italian dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze

• June 18, 9 p.m.

SHAMEL PITTS BLACK HOLE International dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze

• July 6, 7 p.m.

COMPAGNIA SIMONA BUCCI PRELUDI E FUGHE. STUDY Italian dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze

• June 19, 7 p.m.

CRISTINA KRISTAL RIZZO VN SOLO VERSION Italian dance PARC Performing Arts Research Centre Firenze | IT, Firenze

• July 6, 9:30 p.m.

T.H.E DANCE COMPANY INVISIBLE HABITUDES International dance Chiostro di Santa Maria Novella Firenze | IT, Firenze

Florence News 23

CITY BEAT

Florence Dance Festival

Sergei Polunin among performing artists

U

nder the artistic direction of its founders Marga Nativo and Keith Ferrone, the Florence Dance Festival returns this year from June 30 to Aug. 3. The festival has a 30-year-long history and its mission is to make dance accessible to the general public.

The event will take place in the newly restored Great Cloister in Santa Maria Novella, a place of quiet splendor which testifies to the city’s cultural history, whose union with the festival will make a perfect fusion of tradition and modernity.

The stage of the Grand Cloister will be shared with the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina, directed by Giuseppe Lanzetta (July 3, 7, 13, 27).

The Florence Dance Festival will begin on June 30 with the show Open Day in Music and Dance taking place in the Great Cloister in Santa Maria Novella. Entrance is free.

Among the most important events are two performances by Sergei Polunim (July 23 and 24); the FLORENCE IsRAEL international project, which will present some of the most acclaimed Israeli dance companies such as Batsheva The Young Ensamble (July 20), Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company 2 (July 1), and Roy Assaf Dance (July 17); the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo from New York City (July 9); the T.H.E. Dance Company

from Singapore (July 6); The New Generation of Dance (July 21). The Russian State Ballet will close the festival on Aug. 3.

The Italian artists and dance companies that will be performing are FloDance 2.0 (July 11); the Compagnia Zappalà Danza (July 30); Fabula Saltica (Aug. 1); Kines Contemporary Dance Company (July 12); Spotlight on Choreography (July 15); Encuentro Tanguero Italiano (July 26, 27, 28).

Overall, over 400 artists will perform. Workshops, meetings with artists, party evenings and open classes are scheduled as well. All concerts begin at 9:30 p.m.

#MANGIA #EAT #BEVI #DRINK

#ASCOLTA #LISTEN

#INCONTRA #MEET #SCOPRI #DISCOVER

everyday 07:00 am - 12:00 am PIAZZA DELLA STAZIONE 50 FIRENZE - ITALIA @fabbricatoviaggiatori

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

he story of this young stylist by the name of Ichan is quite literally derived from his heart. It was after a heart transplant, in fact, that Ichan woke up with a new perspective on life, realizing that he now had the best chance to express his emotions through his hands. That’s why Benheart is synonymous to ‘son of the heart’ - the distinctive logo imprinted on all his leather goods: shoes, bags, jackets and belts. Along with his heart, Ichan takes inspiration from the American way of living, which he describes as vivacious, happy, full of hopes and fueled by dreams.

“We look at quality first: quality is our brand’s identity. Then, of

course, all our products have to fit and look beautiful when you wear them,” Ichan told us. The clothing and accessories are crafted entirely by hand, the treatment of which is taken from the traditions of Ben’s native town. Customized pieces are also available if you visit one of their shops in Florence.

Benheart Via della Vigna Nuova, 97/r Via Cimatori, 25/r Via Calzaiuoli, 78/r www.benheart.it

CITY BEAT

A Factory of Ideas: Fabbricato Viaggiatori

Benheart: Fashion from the Heart

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Florence News 25

Now with new outdoor space and first Tiki Bar in Florence

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ocated right by Florence main train station, Fabbricato Viaggiatori has now a new outdoor space and will inaugurate the first Tiki Bar in Florence on June 19.

Drinks and cocktails in the new Tiki Bar will be prepared by Nicolò Pedreschi, winner of the first Tuscan Cocktail Week last month.

The name Fabbricato Viaggiatori – the bar is inside a historical building created in 1935 and designed by the Gruppo Toscano of architects among whom was the renowned Giovanni Michelucci, who created the Florence train station – recalls the concept of travelling.

Fabbricato Viaggiatori is in fact a special space open to anyone that welcomes travellers to and from Florence while also helping introduce them to the city.

It has a restaurant, open all day long from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., for breakfast, lunch and dinner, that serves food made with traditional Italian products but also opened to an ‘international taste’.

The food served is made with seasonal, fresh, and organic and eco-sustainable ingredients. A wide selection of wines is also available as well as a cocktail bar and a coffee shop.

The place is colorful and decorated with a variety of green plants, with a design enriched by a vintage feel, from furniture to lights.

Fusing tradition and innovation, Fabbricato Viaggiatori also has a sort of American-style to the sophisticated waiting area for Florence’s main train station. It has free Wi-Fi connection, a selection

Fabbricato Viaggiatori Piazza della Stazione 50

Il Supermercato... da Gustare e deGustare

Sapori & Dintorni is the new way to do the shopping: in the heart of Florence there is a place where Food, Culture and Territory meet.

Get in and discover the Big Supermarket to test and taste!

Inside you will find many typical products of the Italian food tradition.

Buy your favorite product and taste it within the tasting area.

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THE BIG SUPERMARKETS ARE OPEN: • Monday - Saturday: from 08.30 am to 9.00 pm • Sunday: from 09.30 am to 9.00 pm

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

An Icon of Italian Style: The Vespa

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t started with two men: an engineer and an entrepreneur. The engineer showed the entrepreneur his drawing, a two-wheeled image that resembled a vehicle, one fatter than a bicycle or motorcycle, but with small wheels. The engineer said to his boss: “Please, take a look at this uncomfortable and dirty thing.” The entrepreneur responded, “It looks like a Vespa!” (in the Italian language, vespa means wasp). This was the beginning of the Vespa, the vehicle that revolutionized the Italian transportation system and Italian culture forever.

Shortly after that entrepreneur, Enrico Piaggio, saw the weird image, he filed for the patent of “a motor-

cycle with rationally placed parts and elements with a frame combining with mudguards and engine-cowling covering all working parts,” of which “the whole constitutes a rational, comfortable motorcycle offering protection from mud and dust without jeopardizing requirements of appearance and elegance.”

Since 1946, 150 models of Vespas have been produced. They all have the same original concept drawn by the engineer, as not much has changed from the breakthrough original design.

By the end of the 1950s, the production of Vespas quickly spread to foreign markets. The Vespa was

more than an Italian symbol of fun, freedom, youth, and imagination: it was also an international business. Its low running cost, ease of use, maneuverability, wide range of colors and customizations created its plethora for success.

Cinema also played an important role in the worldwide success of the Vespa. In 1952, the Vespa made its Hollywood debut in the movie “Roman Holiday.” In this movie, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck rides the scooter through the streets of Rome, transforming the Vespa into a worldwide cultural phenomenon. In those same years, celebrities such as Marlon Brando and Dean Martin were also wellknown Vespa lovers and drivers, contributing immensely to the creation of the scooter’s image.

The Vespa was destined to appear in many other iconic movies, not just in the 1950s and 1960s, but also in later ones. Fellini, for example, ‘directed’ the Vespa in his 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita. There are multiple other iconic movies in which the most famous Italian scooter appears: Mauro Bolognini’s La Notte Brava, Nanni Moretti’s Dear Diary, and Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter featuring Nicole Kidman. The elegance of the design is such that stylist Giorgio Armani himself recently contributed to a very special series of the scooter. Armani’s model – the Vespa 946 – is inspired by the first version of the scooter ever produced- it has a grey color that shadows to an almost green in particular light reflections with the Armani logo on the side, right above the headlight.

Florence News 27

LIFESTYLE DISCOVER TUSCANY ON A VESPA WITH TUSCANY PRIVATE TOUR The Vespa experience with Tuscany Private Tour offers an original take on touring Tuscany.

During the tour, you can stop to enjoy the beauty of the hills and take pictures – the tour has a selection of stops for those who love photography and want to take pictures of the best Tuscan landscapes.

The itinerary passes through the breathless Francigena Road, the ancient route that in medieval times connected Canterbury to Rome and the harbors of Apulia and that, with Tuscany Private Tours, becomes an itinerary for modern wayfarers who want to set off on a surprising and enchanting route.

The tour, which lasts about six hours, ends with a meal in typical Tuscan style on a wood outdoor table surrounded by vineyards, with a tasting of three wines and local seasonal produce.

INFO TOUR - Private tour for couples or small groups - Departure from Castellina in Chianti at 10 a.m.

- Third-party insurance for civil liability - Visit of two secret Tuscan villages - Tuscan lunch with tasting of 3 wines - Languages: Italian, English + French and Spanish on request TRANSPORTATION FROM FLORENCE INCLUDED www.tuscanyprivatetour.com

Osteria Cimatori 30 In the historic center of Florence, where centuries ago the best craftsmen worked the noble art of topping, today there is the Osteria Cimatori 30.

Here you can find the attention to detail and the pursuit of the ancient Tuscan flavors.

SPECIALTIES: T-BONE STEAK HANDMADE PASTA

Via de’ Cimatori 30/r (near Piazza della Signoria) Open every day from 9 a.m. - 11 p.m.

MONDAY•Smoove MONDAY•YAB Smoove WEDNESDAY•UnYversal WEDNESDAY•Mucho Mas SATURDAY•YABber FRIDAY•Lovers & Friends SATURDAY•YABber Via dei Sassetti 5/r • 055 215160 • www.yab.it • yab.official@gmail.com Facebook:YAB -Official

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

Florence News 29

CITY BEAT

Gilò: Dinner and Piano Bar G

ilò springs from the dream of Gianfranco Lotti, a Florentine designer and leather craftsman creator of the homonymous brand established in 1968, of opening a space in Florence to enjoy the authentic atmosphere of an Italian piano bar. Its formula is one of live music, quality food and drinks until 1 a.m.

Located on via dei Fossi, a few steps away from the Santa Maria Novella train station, Gilò is the place to spend an evening plunged

into an exclusive, cozy and relaxed style, where the essential mood of the piano bar turns into a high-end club created with a special attention to details with on the background the cheerful atmosphere of Italian music. With themed evenings staged by pianists and musicians of different styles, Gilò is a place where French bubbles sit alongside a thorough selection of Italian wines with the rarest vermouth, the most classical liqueurs and exclusive spirits.

On Tuesdays, one of the most affirmed musicians in Florence, pianist and singer Gabriele Mori, performs live Italian songs with an original jazzy mood.

From Wednesday to Friday, on stage is Andrea Caciolli, who performs a refined and elegant repertoire of Italian and international music. Wednesday night is also the night of the Jazz Aperitivo at Gilò, from 8 to 10 p.m. On Saturdays, Caciolli proposes a repertoire of latin song together with singer Yoli Garcia.

The drinks surprise with their variety of labels and creativity of combinations, while the cuisine is a mix of research and tradition based on fresh season fragrances.

At Gilò, sitting and enjoying a late dinner is a subtle pleasure, not only for unconditional nighthawks.

Gilò

Via dei Fossi 44r Tel.: + 39 055 28 33 93 gilopianobar.com

Heroes - Bowie by Sukita

Exhibit runs at Palazzo Medici Riccardi

“Seeing David Bowie on stage opened my eyes to his creative genius. He was different from any other rock star, he had something special that I felt I had the duty to photograph.” These words by Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita are perhaps the best to introduce the exhibition currently running at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, in which 60 photos by Sukita – some of which have never been shown before – are on display.

The pictures retrace the relationship between one of the most revolutionary artists of the 20th century and a great master of photography that lasted over 40 years, since the

early 1970s.

“It was in 1972 that I started looking for David Bowie. And I still am now,” Sukita said.

There will be events and concerts during the three-month exhibition. The exhibit bookstore will sell books on the two artists. The exhibit runs until June 28.

Heroes - Bowie by Sukita Palazzo Medici Riccardi Until June 28

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30 Florence News

FOOD&WINE

Taste Wine with Pino In a renovated 700-year-old well

‘P

ozzo Divino’ is a witty play on words: literally meaning ‘divine well’, it also translates as ‘wine well’ when read as ‘Pozzo di Vino’.

The ancient well is now the cellar that hosts Pozzo Divino’s wine tours. Dating back to 1312, the well was built to supply water through a vast system of underground tunnels and pipes to the prisoners of a local prison known as ‘The Stinche’ (now Teatro Verdi) that stretched as far as the Bargello.

Pino bought the location in 2006 and restored it himself with the help of some friends. Despite its

restoration, Pino reveals that it was always his principal intention to maintain a tangible sense of history when stepping into the cellar.

This is something he has undoubtedly achieved; the place is almost like a time-machine propelling you back a few centuries into a part of authentic medieval Florence – albeit in excellent condition.

Pino imparts his knowledge while taking guests around the cellar, offering a range of Italian wines to sample with an appetizer of complementary regional cheeses, cuts of meats, bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Guests are offered a spectrum of Tuscan flavors to try, from a variety of the region’s renowned Chianti Classico to white wines that include Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Pinot Grigio. The wine-tasting ends with the most exclusive reds of the cellar: Bolgheri, Super Tuscan, Morellino and Montepulciano.

Upon request, guests also enjoy a buffet lunch comprising fresh pasta, specialty Italian second courses, and “the best panini in the world” made by Pino himself.

Pino boasts that 90 percent of the wines he holds are of Tuscan origin, and that his tours prove so popular that he often ships back boxes of the wine sampled to America in order to appease impressed customers. Those looking to take a taste of Tuscany back home can find comprehensive information on shipping zones and freight costs on the company’s website.

Pozzo Divino’s wine tours can be organized for tourist groups, families and universities, and cost only €15 a head – which not only makes it an experience to enjoy over the festive season but also an ideal Christmas gift for lovers of Tuscany’s finest vintages.

Pozzo Divino From 15 Euro!

Via Ghibellina, 144/r 055 24 66 907 Open from Monday to Saturday Wine-tasting on Sundays by appointment (minimum 10 people) www.pozzodivino.it

JUNE www.florencenews.it

Dine with Dante

N

amed after Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, a homely, rustic taverna fittingly lies on Via dei Cimatori, only a few meters away from Dante’s house.

The restaurant offers traditional dishes based on medieval recipes.

Some are adapted and revisited for the modern age in a way that one maintains the omnipresent feeling of Florentine history and tradition – so much so that Dante himself could walk in and dine next to you.

Others are as they were centuries ago.

Traditional medieval-style dishes include homemade ribbon pasta with wild boar and mushroom sauce, roast shin of pork with new potatoes and seasonal vegetables, risotto inspired by medieval Tus-

can flavors, and tasting plates of assorted cheeses accompanied with fresh fruit and jams, including the taverna’s specialty hot red pepper jam.

Also serving as a wine bar and pizzeria, the restaurant offers an eclectic selection of wines from its cellar, an outdoor summer terrace, and is fittingly decorated in a medieval style with armour and banners.

Taverna Divina Commedia Via dei Cimatori, 7r 055 21 53 69

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

Florence News 31

TUSCANY

Race for Glory

DAY TOUR FROM FLORENCE TO SIENA, SAN GIMIGNANO, MONTERIGGIONI & CHIANTI WITH WINE TASTING

Palio returns July 2

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wice a year, on July 2 and Aug. 16, Siena’s bowl-shaped Piazza del Campo is covered with a thick layer of dirt for the city’s most important event of the year: il Palio.

Since the first Palio in 1656, just one race was initially held each year on July 2, named Il Palio di Provenzano, in honor of the Madonna of Provenzano. The second, on Aug. 16, began in 1701 and was named Il Palio dell'Assunta, in honor of the Assumption of Mary. Coinciding with the Feast of the Assumption, it is assumed that this second palio was probably introduced spontaneously as part of the celebration of feast.

Of the original 59, there are 17 contrade still in existence today; of these, only 10 are chosen to race in each year’s Palio. The seven contrade that do not take part in the previous year are automatically included, and three more are chosen by draw.

Each contrada’s participant enters the square around 3:30 p.m., but the main processional does not start until nearly 5 p.m., when a pageant of flag-throwers bearing the colors and symbols of their districts perform in the piazza.

Cheating is commonplace since the race has very few rules: jockeys can pull, push and hit both the horses and each other, and use their whips on other competitors

and their horses. Il Palio is won not by the jockey, but by the horse who represents his contrada, so a horse can win without its rider if it’s the first to cross the line. The loser of the race is considered to be the contrada whose horse came second, not last. The order of the line-up is decided by lot immediately before the race, and only nine of the 10 contrade initially enter the space between the two ropes that constitutes the starting line: the 10th, called the rincorsa, waits outside, giving him yet another chance to cheat. The front rope is only dropped to start the race once the rincorsa enters the

space; and as deals have invariably been made between contrade and jockeys to affect when he enters, this process can take some time, as the rincorsa waits for a particular horse to be well or badly placed.

After a rapid and intense three laps around the Campo the race is over, and the celebrations, or lamentations, begin. The winning contrada is awarded the prestigious prize of a banner, called the palio or drappellone, which is thought to bring great luck to the district that wins it, and is newly designed each year by a local artist for the July Palio, or an internationally recognized artist for the August Palio.

HIGHLIGHTS • Let us take you straight to the blooming heart of Tuscany, discovering the medieval gems of Monteriggioni, San Gimignano and Siena • An expert and knowledgeable tour leader will assist you during the whole tri • Journey by fully-fitted GT Coach • Expert multi-language escort • Siena tour with a professional guide • Visit of San Gimignano and Monteriggioni • Light lunch in a cozy restaurant in Siena • Tasting of traditional pastries • Visit to a rustic wine estate • Sampling of wines, extra-virgin olive oil and regional products • Please note that the given order of the visits may change • Comfortable shoes suggested

FROM €63

BOOK ON THE WEBSITE CIAOFLORENCE.IT GET A 10% DISCOUNT USING THE CODE FN10

WINE TASTINGS IN SAN GIMIGNANO

COOKING CLASSES, PIZZERIA AND TYPICAL TUSCAN RESTAURANT IN THE HEART OF TUSCANY

Via di Racciano 10 - 53037 San Gimignano 334/6399484 • 0577/943090 www.palagetto.it

OPEN ALL DAY LONG La Cantina - piazza Trento, 3 - Greve in Chianti www.pizzerialacantina.it

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32 Florence News

TUSCANY

A Journey Through Human Cruelty

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he Torture and Death Penalty Museum displays more than 100 tools designed to torture and kill. Some of these tools are extremely rare, dating to the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They include the notorious ‘iron maiden,’ the guillotine, rack, torture chair and the chastity belt. Also on display are lesser-known sophisticated devices, such as the ‘heretic’s fork,’ the ‘noisemaker’s fife,’ the ‘Spanish spider’, and flaying instruments.

Via San Giovanni, 82 & 125 San Gimignano Open daily: 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

0577-940526, 055-940151 Tickets: Full €10 Concessions: €7; Groups: €5 www.museodellatortura.it

JUNE www.florencenews.it

Helmut Newton’s Photography

‘The Colors of Poetry’ Galleria Gagliardi Presents Tofanelli

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he Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in San Gimignano presents the exhibition Helmut Newton. San Gimignano until Sept. 1. The exhibit showcases 60 photographs that account for Newton’s art from the beginning of his career in the 1970s until the end of the 1990s. The oldest photograph, a portrait of Andy Wharol made for the magazine Vogue, dates to 1974. The most recent, a Leni’s Riefenstahl’s portrait, was made in 2000. Among the portraits of famous personalities on display are those of Gianni Agnelli (1997), Catherine Deneuve (1976), Anita Ekberg (1988), Claudia Schiffer (1992), and Gianfranco Ferrè (1996).

A high-fashion photographer born on Oct. 31, 1920 in Berlin, Germany, Helmut Newton’s subversive approach to subject matter brought an edge to his editorial spreads. Underlying his bold images is a decadence and cruelty woven into complex stories of sex and power. It is this quality to his art that endures and has left its mark on the history of fashion photography.

“There must be a certain look of availability in the women I photograph; I think the woman who gives the appearance of being available is sexually much more exciting than a woman who’s com-

pletely distant. This sense of availability I find erotic,” Newton said of his models. Due to his Jewish heritage, Newton had to flee his home country during the Nazi rise to power. In the 1940s, he settled in Australia, where he set up a studio.

Throughout his career, he photographed models such as Cindy Crawford and Charlotte Rampling for several well-known magazines, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Playboy, and Elle.

Helmut Newton Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Via Folgore 11, San Gimignano Open from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Until Sept. 1 Entrance €9 (reduced €7) Sangimignanomusei.it

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he Galleria Gagliardi in San Gimignano presents the exhibition The Colors of Poetry by Tuscan painter Alessandro Tofanelli until July 8.

Tofanelli’s poetic paintings are “landscape portraits” characterized by physiognomic variations and theatrical lighting: portraits of a non-existent landscape, ‘stratification of images’ re-elaborated by the artist’s memory. Tofanelli finds beauty in the simple elegance of nature, giving a sensation of tranquility to those who observe his images. His perspectives are tenderly distorted so that depictions of grass, trees, and horizons become subtle evocations of the passing of time.

Born in Viareggio in 1959, Tofanelli, graduated at the Art Institute in Lucca in 1977 before moving to Milan where he attended the

prestigious Brera Art Academy and worked as an illustrator for magazines published by Rizzoli and Mondadori.

Since then, his works have exhibited in a quite a number of prestigious galleries both in Italy and abroad.

Founded by Stefano Gagliardi back in 1991, the gallery today bears no resemblance to the original building apart from a section of the floor made up of oak boards, covering a hole which once enabled repairs to the underside of cars and machinery in the absence of a ramp.

This work of art was created by the previous owner, Dino Conforti, and has been left in his memory. Since 1991, the exhibition area of the gallery has been extended and the gallery has now become a cultural reference for the promotion and sale of contemporary art.

Alessandro Tofanelli.

The Colors of Poetry Galleria Gagliardi Via San Giovanni 57 San Gimignano Open every day until 7:30 p.m. galleriagagliardi.com Until July 8

THE BAR DELL’ORSO IS RENOWNED FOR ITS CURED MEATS, CHEESES AND PRESERVES IN OIL

LIVE MUSIC AND SPORTS Via Faenza 27/r • 055 274 1571

Via Cassia Nord, 23, 53035 Monteriggioni (Siena) 0577 305074

JUNE www.florencenews.it

Gelato Classes with a World Champion

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Florence News 33

TUSCANY

San Gimignano Prepares Harvest Festival Fiera delle Messi returns June 14-16

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ormer Gelato World Champion, Sergio Dondoli, offers gelato classes for adults and kids alike in his hometown of San Gimignano, in the very heart of Tuscany. Gelato was invented in this region thanks to the famous Florentine architect Bernardo Buontalenti, who in 1500 amazed the Medici family with gelato made from fruit and zabaione before Caterina de’ Medici, who was married to King Henry II. He introduced this precious Florentine dessert to the Royal French Court. From here, gelato spread across all of Europe.

Dondoli opened his famous Gelateria di Piazza in San Gimignano in 1992. In 2011, his Gelateria was the only Gelato-shop mentioned by Lonely Planet among the ten “Best Gourmet Places in the World.”

In his career as a gelato-maker Dondoli has earned many prestigious awards, including the Master of Art & Craft Living National Treasure Award in 2016. Since last year, he offered his knowledge and creative energy to whoever, from all over the world, is willing to learn the secrets of preparing real Gelato.

Each class consists of an introduction to Gelato History and to its ingredients. It follows the preparation of a Fiordilatte Gelato made with raw milk and seasonal fruit.

The best part of these classes is the end, when groups can eat the gelato they prepared.

Via del Castello 15 San Gimignano www.dondoligelatoclass.com +39 393 5448969

modern version of the Harvest Festival of the Middles Ages - in which towns of central Italy celebrated the harvest season with music, dances and jousters - every the third weekend of June this festival recreates the magic atmosphere of the happiest moment of the year.

Organized by the Cavalieri di Santa Fina – an association that gets its name name from Fina dei Ciardi, patron of the city, and that has the goal of celebrating the past of San Gimignano – the event begins on Friday, June 14 at 9:30 p.m. in Piazza Duomo and goes until 11 p.m.

Dances, drums and knight exhibits go on throughout the three days of the event. On Saturday festivities start at 4 p.m. with a reproduction

of a military camp in the Rocca di Montestaffoli. A colorful costume parade will arrive in Piazza Duomo at 4:30 p.m., marking the start of other attractions and events that wil end at night with music and dancing in the piazza. The festival begins at 11 a.m. with a medieval market in the Piazza delle Erbe.

In the afternoon there is a parade with more than 500 men dressed in handmade costumes, and a joust and a flag-thrower show. At 7 p.m. the Joust of Bastioni will reward with a gold blaze the knights of the best of the four borough’s contrade.

The festival will end on Sunday at around 7:30 p.m. with a circle dance involving all participants and visitors.

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34 Florence News

TUSCANY

300 Years of Chianti

A guide to understand Chianti Wine

Since 1716, Chianti has escalated in power and prestige to become one of the best types of wine produced in the world. Or perhaps, the best, at least according to most Tuscans still today.

Following is a guide to understand the distinctions between the various Chianti.

Chianti

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hree hundred years ago Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, issued a decree which stated that Chianti wine could only be that produced in Chianti, the region between Florence and Siena. By that day, the attempts of rival producers to imitate Chianti and even use its label had already been too many: something had to be done. That something was creating the first legally enforceable wine appellation. Over the centuries, Tuscany’s land and climate

had combined with methods of production to create the best quality of wine. In no place other than Chianti could such a good wine be produced. And for this reason, the Medici gave Chianti the label that this wine bears to this day.

The decree defined the 175.000 acres of what still today makes up Chianti Classico, the area of wine pilgrims that today produces some 35 million bottles of wine per year, 80% of which exported all over the world.

Bottles simply labeled as Chianti are made from a mix of grapes from several regions in the Chianti region. The main difference with generic Chianti and the rest, is that the minimum percentage of Sangiovese allowed is 75%, with the rules permitting white grapes to be blended in. Adding white grapes to a red wine isn’t as crazy as you might think! The French have been adding Viognier to their Syrah in the Rhone region of France for decades. The reason they do so is to soften the tannin in the Syrah, and to add what they call “aromatic complexity”. The addition of white grapes into the Sangiovese mix however, is less about romance and more about cutting costs. As with all Chianti’s, there are some minimum rules set, i.e. the minimum alcohol level in regular Chianti is 11.5%, and grape harvest yields are “restricted” to 4 tons per acre.

Chianti Classico

The Chianti Classico is central to the region and arguably the most famous. In 1996 it was awarded DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) status, in an effort to raise its perceived quality. All Italian DOCG wines are

JUNE www.florencenews.it actually tasted and analyzed in a lab in order to meet government approval. This procedure is kind of like SAT exams for wine. If the wine passes, it will receive an individually numbered governmental seal across the cap or cork.

Chianti Classico bears a black rooster on the neck of the bottle.

This is a conglomeration of Chianti producers whom have setup the Consorzio Chianti Classico, in a bid to improve the quality and reputation of the region.

The minimum percentage of Sangiovese allowed in Chianti Classico is 80%, with only red grapes permitted to make up the rest of the blend.

Producers can of course choose to make their wine up to 100% Sangiovese, but this is an exception. The alcohol content must be at least 12%, and the wine must spend at least 12 months aging in oak barrels. The Chianti Classico region covers an area of around 100 square miles, and the grape harvest is restricted to no more than 3 tons per acre.

Chianti Riserva / Classico Riserva

If you guessed that Riserva is Italian for Reserve you would be correct! Riserva on a bottle of Chianti is your first clue that the bottle of Chianti you’re holding, stands head and shoulders above the rest. Riserva is a term that can be applied not just to Chianti, but to plenty of other Italian wines such as Brunello and Barolo. Of course, just to make things difficult, it has various meanings, but Riserva on a Chianti just means that the wine spends a minimum of two years (in oak) and three months (in the bottle) aging. The alcohol content must also be at least 12.5%. Chianti Riserva is also a great candidate for additional bottle aging, depending on the producer and vintage.

Vin Santo

Vin Santo (literally meaning “holy wine”) is a style of Italian wine dessert typical of Tuscany. Vin Santo wines are often made from white grape varieties such as Trebbiano and Malvasia, though Sangiovese may be used to produce a rosè style known as “Occhio di Pernice” or eye of the partridge.

Vin Santo is described as a straw wine since is often produced by drying the freshly harvested grapes on straw mats in a warm and well ventilated area of the house. However several producers dry the grapes by hanging on racks indoors. Though technically a dessert wine, the wines can vary in sweetness levels from bone dry (like a Fino Sherry) to extremely sweet.

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

Florence News 35

TUSCANY

Discover Colle Val d’Elsa

‘The Italian Way of St. James’ Discover the Via Francigena among ancient routes and modern “pilgrims”

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ver 25,000 people, half of whom are Italian, walked at least a part of the Via Francigena last year. Compared to the number of people who walked that stretch in previous years, this is encouraging — an improvement due to the increasing number of bed & breakfasts along the route and efforts to promote the route made by the region of Tuscany. They have been trying to transform it in a sort of Italian version of the Spanish Way of St. James — but that could, and should, be improved in the future.

It was this the conclusion of Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano that recently published a reportage on the route. According to Il Fatto, the potential of the route is huge and, if well exploited, could make it the Italian version of the St. James Way. First documented as the Lombard Way and then the Frankish Route in 725, according to the travel records of Willibald, Bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria, the route was named Via Francigena in 876, given its crossing with French territories (Francia, in Italian) at the Abbey of San Salvatore al Monte Amiata in Tuscany. It was used throughout

the Middle Ages by pilgrims headed to Rome from the North, particularly from France. Nearly 400 kilometers of the Via pass through Tuscany, accounting in part for the development of a number of the region’s historic settlements and trade and religious centers.

Today, tourists and history buffs can enjoy the cultural mecca that is Via Francigena by following one or all of the 15 Tuscan legs, beginning with the journey from Passo della Cisa to Pontremoli and ending with the route from Radicofani to Acquapendente.

The Via passes through San Gimignano and its Fortress of Montestaffoli. Originally a castle for the Lombard Astolfo and later a Dominican Convent, the fortress took on a defensive role in the 14th century while under the threat of attack from Siena.

To book a trip to the Via Francigena: www.spreadyourwings.it

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ts name means “Hill of Elsa Valley”, where “Elsa” is the name of the river which crosses it.

Today, Colle di Val d’Elsa is internationally renowned for the production of crystal glassware and art (15% of world production), largely produced in the industrial lower town.

The area was settled by man in the 4th millennium BC, but the first mentions of the city are from the 9th century AD. In 1269 it was the place of a famous battle during the wars of Guelphs and Ghibellines.

In 1479 it was besieged by Neapolitan troops. From the 14th century on, it was a possession of Florence and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until the unification of Italy in 1860.

In the 20th century it became

an important industrial center.

During World War II it was bombed

by Allied aircraft.

The oldest part of the town is the “colle alta”, the higher part, with a well preserved medieval center.

The town developed along the river from the 11th century onwards, building an artificial canal to power various industrial activities, such as wheat mills and paper factories. The city is also famous for being the birthplace of sculptor and architect Arnolfo di Cambio.

To book a trip to Colle Val d’Elsa: www.spreadyourwings.it

FREE WINE TASTINGS IN COLLE VAL D’ELSA

ENOTECA IL SALOTTO DOCG WINES • OIL • GRAPPA • CANTUCCI DI PRATO TYPICAL TUSCAN CAKES

Via Gracco del Secco, 31, 53034 - Colle di Val d’Elsa (SI) 0577926983 • www.enotecailsalotto.com

Meet Vernaccia

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ante Aligheri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Pope Martin IV, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Michelangelo, just to name a few of the greats that praised the most famous wine produced in San Gimignano. A delicious white wine, that is even referenced in Dante’s legendary “Divine Comedy.”

First mentioned in tax documents from 1276, Vernaccia is not only one of Italy’s most esteemed wines, but also one of its oldest. The wine boasts a bold straw-yellow color and a flavor that delicately combines floral and fruity. Perfectly suited for fish and white meats in particular, Vernaccia can be enjoyed even more when combined with complimenting cuisine.

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

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A Port for All Musicians

he novelty at Porto di Mare this summer is Jam sessions on Tuesdays. The club and restaruant offers any variery of music throughout the whole week. The smooth sounds of a saxophone and the vibrant roar of the trumpet will echo in the club as it opens up to jazz music. Porto di Mare – Eskimo has had a variety of acts in the past,

and is one of the most renowned places to enjoy live music in Florence. Last year, alongside famous jazz musicians from all over the world Porto di Mare hosted the initial rounds of the Arezzo Wave contest, one of the most famous Italian music festivals. The venue will be a part of the circuit where musicians compete with each other for a spot in Arezzo. Porto

Florence News 37

LEISURE

Tuscany on Horseback

HIGHLIGHTS • No experience required • DURATION: 6 hours • Tuscan meal accompanied by the finest local wines • An expert and knowledgeable tour leader will assist you during the whole trip

di Mare’s focus on live music and cultural exchange is one that the man who started the club, Francesco Cofone, holds close to his heart. “We never play anything recorded here,” he says with a smile.

The method of bridging cultures at Porto di Mare is just getting out an instrument and beginning to play.

“I’d be keen to talk to anyone who

is interested in playing and sharing their music with us,” Francesco says. Every Tuesday the club hosts an open-mic night where any artist can truly go out and share their music.

Porto di Mare – Eskimo is located on the corner of Via Pisana and Via del Ponte Sospeso, open for lunch at 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and with music in the evening from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.

INCLUDED • Transportation IN/OUT town by minibus • Orientation horse riding lesson • Approximately 1.50-hour relaxing horse ride through the Chianti countryside • Helmets • Wine and olive oil tasting • Guided visit to a boutique winery • Guided visit to an olive oil mill and olive oil tasting

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he tour offered by Ciao Florence is an adventure through the lush vineyards, native woods, olive groves and rolling hills of Chianti, with a collection of breathtaking and unforgettable views in the most wonderful and romantic way: on horseback.

No prior experience is needed.

Before the ride, you will be given a lesson by a trained guide to become better acquainted with your

horse. After the ride, you will enjoy a Tuscan meal washed down with Chianti wine and an oil tasting.

If you do not want to ride a horse, you can still come and enjoy the tour with a 20% discount. So, while your friends go on the horse ride you can enjoy snacks, wine and a nice walk around a traditional Tuscan farm. If you have never horse-whispered before, then let horses whisper to you.

NOTES AND ADVICES • Long-leave pants and sports shoes are required (no flipflops!)

• Horses can bear up to 220 lbs (100 kg) • Not suitable for kids under 14

FROM €139

BOOK ON THE WEBSITE CIAOFLORENCE.IT AND GET A 10% DISCOUNT USING THE CODE FN10

I’ GIRONE DE’ GHIOTTI THE VINAIO NEAR PIAZZA SIGNORIA

Tuscan Panini, Artisanal Beers And Wine Tasting NEW SANDWICH LEONARDO

Cooking Classes In Tavola aims to spread the rich food and wine culinary traditions of Italy and the Tuscany region through an incredible variety of dishes and recipes to all interested in learning the secrets behind the traditional Italian kitchen.

With this intent to promote their knowledge, In Tavola organizes several opportunities for professionals and beginners to participate in cooking and baking lessons with the guidance of professional Chefs in an individual or group setting.

Via dei cimatori WINE ON TAP 23/r (near Piazza Signoria) IN SANTO SPIRITO

I’ GIRONE DE’ GHIOTTI

Tuscan Panini, Artisanal Beers and Wine Tasting NEW SANDWICH FOR LEONARDO’S 500TH DEATH ANNIVERSARY!

Via dei Velluti, 18/20r 055 217672 www.intavola.org

Bring your bottles and fill them directly from the barrels of Il Santo Vino, starting at less than €1.50. Patrons can choose from a gamut of Italian wines alongside selected local specialty and organic products

Via dei Cimatori 23/r (near Piazza Signoria)

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday: 10 a.m.–2 p.m.; 5–9 p.m.

Borgo Tegolaio, 46/r Tel. 055 53 87 122 , 345 90 93 425 www.ilsantovino.it Facebook: Il Santo Vino

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38 Florence News

GUIDE

A Guide to Florence Gardens Piazzale Michelangelo The perfect place for a panoramic view of the city, especially great for sunsets.

Transportation: Take bus line 12 or 13 from the Santa Maria Novella station.

Opening hours: Every day from 9 a.m. until sunset.station.

Giardino dell’Orticoltura Built in 1879 by Giacomo Roster for the Tuscan Horticultural Society.

Transportation: Take bus line 2 from Santa Maria Novella station.

Address: Via Vittorio Emanuele II, 4 Information: 055 20 06 62 37 (Tue afternoon or Fri morning)

Bardini Gardens

Giardino delle Rose (Rose Garden) A green terrace with different sort of roses from all around world below Piazzale Michelangelo, overlooking the historic center of the city.

Transportation: Take bus line 12 or 13 from S.M.N station Address: Viale Giuseppe Poggi 2 (near Piazza Michelangelo)

On the hills near Piazza Michelangelo is one of Florence’s best kept secrets. Visitors will see camellias, viburnum, hydrangeas, glycines and rose trees of various species.

Full ticket: €10 Address: Costa San Giorgio, 2 Information: 055 200 66 206

NEW GYM NEAR SANTA MARIA NOVELLA Brand new gym in the heart of Florence is now open.

• Fully outfitted with the latest cardio & strength equipment from Technogym • Offering a wide array of classes ranging from Zumba to Pilates, every week • All-inclusive memberships with no sign-up fees • Special pricing for students • Friendly English-speaking staff • Free wi-fi Mon. to Fri.: 8 a.m.-10 p.m, Saturday: 10 a.m.-6 p.m, Sunday: 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Via dei Fossi, 56/r 055 23 96 497

Botanical Gardens Giardino dei Semplici Established by Cosimo dei Medici in 1545, this is one of the oldest parks in the world. It is currently maintained by the University of Florence and boasts a collection of carnivorous plants.

Transportation: Take bus line 14 from Santa Maria Novella to bus

JUNE www.florencenews.it stop ‘Ghirlandaio’.

Address: Via Micheli Information: 055 27 57 402

from train station S.Maria Novella to bus stop Gioia Address: Via Federigo Stibbert, 26 Info: www.museostibbert.it/en or call 055 47 55 20

Cascine Park

Giardino Torrigiani (Torrigiani Garden)

A daytime hotspot for outdoor activities, much loved by Florentines.

Every Tuesday the park hosts the city’s largest open-air market, with a very good offers on local specialties such as cheese, vegetables and honey.

Transportation: Take the tram line from the Santa Maria Novella station to the Cascine stop

Frederick Stibbert Villa Transformed from a simple Italian park to a romantic English garden

by Giuseppe Poggi, this outdoor space features temples, rock caves, fountains and a mysterious Egyptian temple. Entrance to the garden is free; closed only on Thursdays.

Transportation: Take bus line 4

The widest privately owned garden in the city boundaries within Europe. The land was inherited

by Marquis Pietro Torrigiani in the early 19 th century. He transformed the park into the ‘english style’ as fashion of the time. The garden still known as a botanical garden with great wealth of plant and tree from all around the world.

It can be visited if one of the owners will accompany the visitors during their tours.

Transportation: Take the bus line 11 from Piazza San Marco to bus stop ‘Campuccio’.

Adress:Via dei Serragli 144 Information: www.giardinotorrigiani.it or call 055-224527

LUNCH&DINNER | BEER&BURGERS | LIVE MUSIC&APERITIVO Via Verdi 47R-49R | 055 199 91 333 | www.offthehook.it

Cartoleria Lory Srl P.za Frescobaldi 8r 50125 055-213246 Shop.lory.net www.digital-fineart.it www.lorycad.net

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JUNE www.florencenews.it

he MS Investigations Program, Henry C Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, University of New Haven, is organizing a three-day conference focusing on how organized crime, terrorists and corrupt officials work internationally to form financial alliances.

The conference, which will take place of the University of New Haven campus in Prato June 24-27, will focus on three areas – sports integrity, human trafficking, and money laundering. Scheduled speakers are police, prosecutors, politicians, investigative journalists, academics, athletes, former match-fixers, victims, anti-money laundering, and compliance executives.

Speakers include Henry C. Lee, the modern-day ‘Sherlock Holmes of America’ – pioneer in the of use of forensic science in criminal investigations and professor at University of New Haven; Iana Matei, winner of the U.S. Department of State ‘Hero of the Year’ for her work in the rescue of hundreds of women caught in human trafficking; Peter Gomez, one of Italy’s top investigative journalists and author of a number of books on corruption, the mafia, and financial crime; Steven Berryman, former Special Agent with the IRS Criminal In-

CITY BEAT

The ‘New’ Diner

UNH in Prato Hosts Conference on Mafias, Murder and Money

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Florence News 39

Between change and tradition

vestigation Division, and one of the lead investigators in the FIFA corruption case; Nicola Gratteri, Anti-Mafia Prosecutor and Winner of the 2014 Civil Courage Prize; Alanna Lavelle, former FBI special agent who led anti-human trafficking investigations in Central America and across the United States; Richard McLaren, lead investigator in the WADA inquiry into the Russian sports doping case; Declan Hill, international best-selling author and associate professor of investigations at University of New Haven; Tim Palmbach, former police officer, professor and expert in biological data and human trafficking; Matteo Civillini, head of the Italian Reporting Project, expert in organized crime and financial networks; Drago Kos, head of OECD; Adriano Mogos, independent journalist and winner of the CEI-SEEMO award, the Kurt Schork Award and the special Global Shining Light Award; Chris Rasmussen, Danish money laundering and match-fixing expert; Kim Manchester, managing director, Manchester CF, a provider of online financial intelligence training; Oxana Alistratova, a specialist in the fields of prevention trafficking in human beings and migration for development.

Gluten Free

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nown for being the first American diner to open in the city in 2004, The Diner has been the place in Florence where you can find a real American hamburger.

This spring the restaurant, which has recently changed its ownership, will be introducing some important novelties such as new typical Italian dishes and a new selection of craft beers produced by some of the most renowned local breweries. Among the dishes that will be on the new menu is a hamburger made of 70% beef and 30% pork, topped with fresh cheese and caramelized onions, with fennel seeds inside. Other novelties include strengthening of the Wifi, TV placement and the introduction of Sky to provide a wide range of sports coverage including baseball, basketball, and soccer, to cater to the needs of guests looking for a place to unwind. The restaurant’s upper floor can become a

study room for students, a quiet space to catch up on work all while in easy reach of comfort food that may serve as a quick reminder of home.

The Diner also supports local markets that bring their produce to the restaurant fresh every morning.

The restaurant, which is located on Via dell’Acqua 2 and is open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day and is also planning on a more entertaining nightlife to attract local and foreign students alike.

The Diner Via Dell’Acqua 2 Facebook: TheDinerFirenze Tel.: + 39 055 29 07 48

ating out can become an unpleasant experience for those who suffer from food allergies. One of the most common food allergies is celiac disease-the inability to eat food with gluten.Thanks to the commitment of its owners, who have attended the courses organized by the Associazione Italiana Celiachia (the Italian Association specialized in celiac diseases), alongside a traditional menu, the restaurant Trattoria Da Garibardi offers a special gluten free menu with pasta, bread, pizza, as well as many other dishes. The restaurant has a very large kitchen and special tools that allow to prepare gluten free food without any danger of contamination.Thanks to this special background and commitment, the typical, tasty Tuscan cuisine is now accessible even to those who suffer from celiac disease.

Trattoria Da Garibardi Piazza del Mercato Centrale 38/r Tel.: + 39 055 212267 www.garibardi.it

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Via dei Pandolfini, 26 r

Via dei Boni 5r Via dei Boni 5r Borgo Croce 2r 334 la 7007714 www.leftluggageflorence.com leftluggageflorence.com

EVERY TUESDAY Via dei Pandolfini, 26r • 347 381 8294

VALIGERIA GAZZARRINI Via Porta Rossa, 71-73R - Firenze, Italy Tel. +39 055 212747 www.valigeriagazzarrini.com

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