Florence - The perfect day out

Nightlife in Florence

Florence is an international tourist destination and is highly regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  As such, it regularly sees an influx of new and exciting people, making the prospect of a holiday in the city a time filled with surprises at every turn.

It boasts one of the liveliest nightlife scenes around, with a variety of choices for revelers of all ages.  Bars and pubs are scattered about the city, along with music lounges for the older crowd and dance clubs for the younger visitors. 

Some bars, like the Dolce Vita, serve delicious cocktails all day, along with good music and occasional exhibitions.  Happy hour at many bars around Florence typically last for a good part of the evening and comes replete with tasty and appetizing snacks.  Clubs are usually teeming with well-dressed young Florentines who pack the venues in droves after midnight. 

A night out in Florence offers a plethora of choices although the steep bar tabs and cover charges might make a dent on your wallet.  Worth it, though, for the rare enjoyment this cosmopolitan city can afford.

Florence Cathedral interior

On entering what is the jewel in Florence’s crown, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore the visitor is immediately struck by the sheer size of the building:  At 153 metres long, 38 wide, and 90 metres high, its Gothic interior is vast and surprisingly sparsely decorated, especially for the centre-piece of such a culturally rich city.  Many of the decorations in the church have been lost in the course of time, or have been transferred to the Museum Opera del Duomo, Florence’s cathedral museum, but there are still many significant works of religious art on display, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy by di Michelino, and Paolo Uccelo’s Funerary Monument.

Above the main door is the colossal clock face with fresco portraits of Uccelo’s four Prophets, one of the very few examples of this type of clock still in existence.  But above all the fascinating features and artefacts in this most famous of Florentine buildings, the stained glass windows are surely the most memorable – all 44 of them.  Created in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, they depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments and are the work of the greatest artists of the age such as Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello and Andrea del Castagno.  Truly beautiful works of art in Florence, a city full of them.

Florence Cathedral exterior

Even in a city of architectural and artistic wonders such as Florence, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is a particular treasure.  Possibly one of Florence’s most iconic buildings, the Duomo, as it is more commonly known, was begun in 1296 and completed 140 years later.  The dome itself is one of the great achievements of Renaissance architecture, and is the result of a competition held in 1419 to design what was to become the centrepiece of the cathedral, with Filippo Brunelleschi eventually winning the commission.  The fact that he chose to construct it from stone posed many technical problems, and it was in overcoming these problems that Brunelleschi was to complete one of the most impressive architectural achievements of the age – Despite weighing 37,000 tons and containing over 4 million bricks, Florence cathedral’s dome was made without the use of any type of scaffolding or supports, and remains the world’s largest.

Just as striking in their originality, but much more recent in their execution are Florence cathedral’s exterior walls, which are faced in alternate vertical and horizontal bands of red, white, and green marble. This was designed by Emilio De Fabris in 1864, and despite the huge difference in age between the facade and the rest of Florence cathedral, its delicacy of form and voluptuous decoration fit seamlessly with the rest of this remarkable and unforgettable building.

Florence - a tale of two cities (well 2 journalists to be precise)

Florence to many a visitor has too much pomposity for its own good.  Well any city that can boast of sons like Michelangelo, Dante and Machiavelli then you can see why.  This view of Florence is misguided – the Renaissance city needs to be explored to appreciate its beating heart.  So that is our task today.  Hire a car from Pronto: The Italian car hire specialists and we have 12 hours to report back on what we find.   Hailing from Italy but not Florence the first thing we observe is the mix of population renowned for being hearty and non conformist but in their slip stream – eternal romantics – as you would expect as Florence is set in the lush rolling hills of Tuscany.  The bi-product - a wonderful Florence that has been at the heart of a civil and cultural revolution.    No guns or sword drawn today so we have no problems that about the car we hired from Pronto being damaged – but we did have the excessive covered. 

The Pronto Car Hire litmus test for a city is to ask a local – at random – to suffer a ‘tourist’ and give us their recommendations on what to see and do in Florence.  What a joy!  It was if the 3 we asked worked for the Florence tourist board.   The recommendations were amazing from the expected – you know the Ponte Vecchio etc to the best place for espresso!  So much so and to the probable (joking annoyance) of Garry that manages Pronto car hire in Florence we are going to split our article into 2 reports.

Garry here – lol:  I would expect no less but you two make sure that Florence is given the adulation it deserves.

PS – don’t forget where you parked the car in Florence you Roman reviewers (I have it out next week – BTW how did you get an A3 convertible – I need to speak to Janice in Rome – lol)

Florence Trip - A customer’s review

There are only a few people who can accidentally stumble upon such perfection on their travels. One of ours happened on our first visit to Florence. We arrived late in the day in the car we had hired.  After setting into our hotel and enjoying a superb meal at Toscano we started strolling, on a wonderfully warm, moonlit evening, in searching for the Arno in Florence.

My friend Jim was on a going on about how there couldn’t ever ever be a site that awed and astounded him as much as the Duomo in Milano. Well I knew Florence had it secrets.  Just as he was about to repeat this claim we turned the corner and there it was. Bathed in the moonlight, and hardly any of people around, the marble facades of the Duomo held our gaze, daring Jim to not change his mind there and then! But change it he did. (Mind you, we never again saw the Duomo or its piazza as bereft of the throngs of tourists that usually crowd the area).

In the next few days in Florence, we cooled off in the shelter of the huge cathedral; we explored the inside, fascinated by the walls, ceilings, and the magnificent dome. We climbed the campanile and climbed up into the dome to get a better look at the fabulous Dantesque murals. (I love those murals with devils and demons taking the evil to hell!). But nothing will ever compare with that first glimpse of this extremely beautiful Cathedral.

An interesting story is the history of the Duomo in Florence is the competition to determine who would build the actual dome. When Brunelleschi was asked how he proposed to build it he replied “If I told you how, then you would know how to do it”. An archeological wonder for all time, the dome was open for over one hundred years, while Masses were conducted with birds among the congregation and rain pouring in.

Florence

Florence is a unique city and home of Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarca. Most people a drawn to Florence to enjoy its museums which are full of renaissance and medieval masterpieces and art. Everyone is keen to see Michelangelo’s “David”, the Botticelli’s paintings and of course the Duomo. Tourists gravitate to Florence to enjoy romantic walks along the river Arno and across Ponte Vecchio. To take advantage of all that Florence has to offer we would recommend that you hire a car either in the city or at the airport. Then you can jump in your hired car explore a city and the lesser known places in Florence like the colourful markets of Piazza Spirito and San Lorenzo. While the car you hire will undoubtedly take you to the church of Santa Croce with permanent residents including Machiavelli, Foscolo, Galileo and of course Marconi.

So if you are going to hire a car either in Florence itself or at the airport then let Pronto: The Italian car hire specialists help you. All you have to do is fill out our simple search engine form. Tell us when and where you plan to pick up and drop off, and we take care of all the rest. All you have to do is look over the great deals we have to offer you, select one and click book it. That is why thousands of people use Pronto car hire to rent a car in Florence or any other city in Italy every single year.

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