Il Dolce Viaggio: Chianti

It might seem sacrilegious to spend only one day on the historic center of Florence but our style of travel involves a lot of movement, from early morning until late evening, and little time spent within the confines of museums and churches. The center was quite compact and we felt like we'd gotten a pretty good sense of the city from twelve hours of solid exploration. I hadn't had any luck at all finding information about interesting neighborhoods in other parts of Florence so we dedicated Friday to a road trip to some interesting locations north and south of the city.

I had come across mentions of Giambologna's Apennine Colossus while searching specifically for things that were weird and unusual along our route. I was somewhat surprised that a thirty-six foot statue by a well-known Renaissance sculptor less than ten miles from Florence wouldn't receive much recognition in travel guides, but somehow the Colossus has flown under the radar of international tourism. It took us about half an hour to reach Villa Demidoff, the nineteenth century estate that inherited the Colossus when a Russian prince bought the land in 1872. In order to see the statue we had to walk down a long dirt road, passing by a variety of other curiosities. At the top of a hill stood Diamante, a forty-two sided geometrical figure that apparently generates photovoltaic energy to supply the villa.

At the time the Colossus was built, the land had been purchased by Francesco I de' Medici who wished to build a luxurious villa and gardens for his lover Bianca Capello. The Flemish sculptor Giambologna, who we were familiar with from the Fountain of Neptune, was commissioned with the most massive task within a large complex of pools and gardens. The concept of the sculpture is a giant being literally born from the Apennine mountains with earth and vegetation clinging to his skin. In his left hand he holds the head of a monster from whose mouth water gushes into the large pool underneath. The Colossus contains several chambers inside that have long been closed to the public, including a small room inside the head with a fireplace to cause smoke to be emitted from the giant's nostrils. The dragon in the back was added over a hundred years later after a cavelike shell that surrounded the giant had collapsed.

After the mysterious deaths of their respective spouses, Francesco and Bianca eventually married but their marital bliss did not last long. In 1587 they both died agonizing deaths within days of each other, with the cause officially being listed as malaria but more likely the result of poisoning. Successive Medicis cared for the estate and occasionally embellished it but it ultimately fell into disrepair at the hands of the House of Lorraine. Eventually the damage to the villa was so great that it was deemed more cost-effective to destroy it than to repair it. The estate was bought by the Demidoffs in the late nineteenth century and some renovation ensued, with the new residential villa being enlarged from a former servant's quarters. In the 1980's the province of Florence bought the property and opened it to the public. While it is a pleasant and open green space with some remarkable features, it is surely just a shadow of the legendary palace and gardens that the Medicis frolicked in during the Renaissance. We wandered around and found a few other remnants of the original lavish gardens, but nothing that approached the size or magnificence of Giambologna's masterpiece.

We drove back south for a stop at the small town of Fiesole, renowned for its hilltop views over a distant Florence. I had Fiesole on my itinerary before the trip and this stop had been reinforced by a recommendation from the gallery owner in Pistoia. Many towns in Tuscany are referred to as Etruscan cities, but there are typically few remnants of that mysterious pre-Roman civilization. Fiesole was no different in that regard but it was a pleasant drive along the winding road that climbed the hill. Piazza Mina in the center of the town was a pleasant square featuring both classic and modern sculpture. It wasn't obvious where to locate the famous elevated view of Florence but we eventually found a decent outlook at a pub with a terrace on the south side of the piazza.

Fiesole didn't seem like much of a walking town but we had never planned to stay there for long. Our next stop was a rather innocuous town that we surely would have never approached had it not been the site of the only Friday weekly market we had found within the environs of Florence. Grassina may be best known as the town to which wealthy Florentines sent their clothes to be laundered. It was small enough that we hoped to find the market just by driving into the center of town. We found the small central piazza that doubled as a parking lot but there was no market in sight. There was a very appetizing lampredotto food truck however that was operated by a husband and wife team. No sooner had we ordered than two groups of grimy locals showed up for their regular lunches. We tried several different versions of the lampredotto and our verdict was that it was just as good if not better than the stand at the Mercato Centrale. The owner of the food truck was able to direct us to the market on the other side of the river but it was small and mostly dedicated to clothing. There were a couple of fruit and cheese stands but very little that we found of interest.

San Casciano in Val di Pesa is an oft-recommended day trip from Florence so we were surprised to find the town nearly empty when we arrived in the early afternoon. The old town consisted of basically two intersecting streets and it didn't take long for us to walk each of them from one end to the other. Each street was lined with typical four story apartment buildings with yellowish or orange plaster facades and greenish shutters. It was a pleasant enough village but without much to distinguish it from others we had visited.

We might not have stayed more than half an hour if we hadn't wandered into l'Osteria del Dolce, an enticing little gelateria with a couple of small tables outside surrounded by planters. When we walked in the gelato counter was empty because the owner Alessio hadn't taken his products out of the freezer for lack of customers that day. When our family of five walked in he took it as a signal to begin to display his gelato properly. I was a little self-conscious about the effort he seemed to be making on our behalf but Alessio insisted on hauling out every flavor he had and explaining each one. He was clearly quite proud about the artisanal authenticity of his gelato and told us it had been the family business for generations. Somehow we came around to the topic of travel and it turned out that Alessio was quite a world adventurer, with several trips to Africa already completed. We haven't been to sub-Saharan Africa yet at all and he gave us some good tips about where to make our first inroads.

We arrived very quickly at the edge of the old town where there were some surviving sections of the medieval stone walls that the Florentines erected to stave off sieges from the Sienese. The wall had clearly once had a smooth outer surface of cement but this had mostly crumbled away leaving exposed the irregular jumble of beige stones that had somehow remained standing for centuries. At each end of the wall section were imposing watch towers which seemed capable of resisting any medieval assault.

Outside the walls we could see a more modern section of the town where a jumble of modest homes crowded up to the edge of the hillside. The hill continued to slope away and merged into the verdant Val di Pesa. There was a good sized playground here which the kids immediately rushed to, ignoring the oppressive mid-afternoon heat. Not far away was a white water tower, by far the tallest structure we had seen in the town. Apparently the elevator inside was once accessible for a small fee for the expansive views of San Casciano and the surrounding valley, but it has been closed to the public for at least the last several months.

San Casciano had seemed small but it was a positive metropolis compared to Montefioralle. This hilltop village came up repeatedly in my research as one of the most beautiful towns in the Chianti region. We climbed up to the town from the convenient dirt lot beneath via a rough cobblestone street that led to an ancient brick archway.

The town consisted of a single narrow circular street that passed between old stone buildings and one small side street. There was a scattering of tourists about but no sign of any native life. As always there were numerous planters attached to the walls and placed on the street to lighten the medieval environment. There were two restaurants in town, both closed for the afternoon, and no other commercial establishments.

A staircase led to the upper level of the town which consisted of a church and a boutique hotel. The hotel's garden clearly had the best view around but it was closed to outsiders. We uncharacteristically sat on a bench outside the church for about half and hour doing nothing at all except enjoying the solitude while the kids played a card game on the steps. As we passed back under the archway at the entrance to the town began to hear the sounds of a loud, very unpleasant argument coming from one of the stone buildings. It sounded like a domestic dispute with a man shouting at the top of his lungs and a woman half shouting and half crying. Soon their voices were joined by that of a child who was also screaming. It was a shocking reminder that even though we perceive these atmospheric medieval villages as travel sights, they are still home to real human beings who suffer from the same social ills as everyone else in the world. On that uncomfortable note we left Montefioralle, but we did get one last view of the town five minutes later from a neighboring hill.

The Chianti region has always been defined by the wine produced there, to the extent that it is no longer known if the area is named for the wine or vice versa. The original small area was formed by a league of three towns that called themselves the League of Chianti as far back as the thirteenth century. In 1932 the official designation of the Chianti region was radically expanded to include several other wine regions as far north as Montalbano, as far west as Pisa, and all the way to the eastern edge of Tuscany. Afterwards many towns in the central region of Chianti Classico eagerly adopted the Chianti surname, no doubt to benefit from the boost it would give to their local wine sales. One such town is Greve in Chianti which added the designation in 1972. Greve was just a few minutes drive from Montefioralle so it was an obvious choice to kill a little more time before dinner. On our first pass through town there was no sign of anywhere to park whatsoever. The town seemed just as sleepy as the others we had seen that day and we considered abandoning our plan, but I hate to be defeated and eventually I pulled over and located a parking lot on Google Maps. In the end Greve turned out to be worth the effort because Piazza Matteotti with its triangular layout was unexpectedly beautiful and memorable. The piazza was lined with restaurants, cafes, and wine shops designed to capture as much of the tourist dollar as possible and we'd already experienced plenty of that type of environment. Once we had taken a few photographs of the piazza we moved on from Greve fairly quickly.

After reviewing our options for dinner I decided our best option was La Reggia Degli Etruschi, all the way back in Fiesole. This restaurant came highly recommended both for the cuisine and for the views over Florence. We hadn't found a particularly great spot to look out over Florence on our morning visit and I was curious to see what we had missed. I called ahead and the man who answered told me they had a large party filling the patio but they ad a table available for us indoors. Once we reached Piazza Mina again I was hopeful we would find a parking spot next to the traffic circle but they were all full. A quick pass through the major streets of the center revealed no evidence of any place to park. The street leading from the piazza upward to the restaurant was marked for pedestrians only. Since the time of our reservation had arrived we decided that Mei Ling and the kids would walk up to the restaurant while I searched around a little further for parking. This led to one of my most unpleasant driving experiences of the entire trip as I took off down a perfectly normal two lane road which suddenly and inexplicably narrowed to a single lane. This narrowing did nothing to inhibit the local drivers from continuing to use it as a two lane road with heavy traffic proceeding in both directions despite the obvious insufficiency in width. I was in particularly bad shape here as my SUV was one of the widest cars on the road and I was forced to drive with my right-sided wheels on the narrow sidewalk and the right side of my car practically brushing against the buildings on the that side. Meanwhile a solid line of cars was barreling past me on my left close enough that I could have reached out and touched them through my driver's side window. With a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel I focused all my energy on driving in a perfectly straight line, ignoring the palpable frustration of the drivers behind me as I repeatedly slowed down to maintain the inches of separation from the cars coming the opposite direction. I drove in those horrendous conditions for what seemed like an eternity, looking for any opportunity to escape but none was forthcoming. It seemed like the road could have continued on that way for miles. I finally saw a narrow alley to the right and made my move, but it was clear trying to proceed further into that threadlike space would be even worse than the situation from which I had just escaped. I had no choice but to wait for enough space to clear that I could back out into the road again, this time to return in the direction from which I had come. Of course the traffic only let up enough for me to quickly back out and block the road - by the time I had repositioned myself and changed gears a line of drivers had halted in front of me and were glaring at me furiously. The return trip was even worse than the first leg, because now there were parked cars instead of buildings on my right and I had to worry about side mirrors and door handles projecting into what miniscule space I had. Somehow I made it back to Piazza Mina without a scratch on the car. I drove back down the hill and eventually found a spot on the side of the road about a quarter of a mile away. This had seemed ridiculously far when we were driving into town but now I was grateful to have it.

Even after the relaxing walk uphill my nerves were still crackling as I hiked along Via San Francesco to the restaurant. It was almost half an hour since I had dropped everyone off to look for parking. Mei Ling and the kids were tucked away in the depths of the restaurant and already had some appetizers in front of them. Dinner fell a little short of our hopes as the menu proved to be typical and the staff was obviously distracted by the large, raucous party on the patio. Afterwards Cleo and I walked a little further up the street to the staircase that led to the top of the hill where the San Francesco monastery stood. At the top of the stairs there was no one except for a couple enjoying a picnic on the lawn. We could see the expanse of Florence in the distance far below us.

The sun quickly dropped behind the mountains and we rejoined the others on the balcony outside of the restaurant. This was the famous view that had eluded us on our morning visit. We could clearly make out the dome and campanile of the illuminated cathedral and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. We were seeing the historic center from the opposite angle relative to our perspective when we were at Piazzale Michelangelo. In the background were the purplish-black outlines of the Chianti hills through which we had driven that afternoon. Tomorrow we would be leaving Florence for good and exploring legendary hilltop towns of Tuscany all day before spending the night in Siena, the historical enemy of the Florentines.