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The Florentine
Art and culture from Florence, Italy, focusing on exhibitions, museums, artisans and more.
Our events listing keeps you up-to-date on the latest and greatest in culture, music and other English-friendly entertainment. This is a selection of the best of them. TECHNO/Carl Craig March 16, 9:30pm Viper Theatre, via Pistoiese, Florence Star of the international electronic music scene, and
Foreign artists of many mediums have worked and studied in Tuscany for centuries, seeking inspiration from its masterful art and evocative landscape. Yet, who are some of the creative personalities that have produced art here during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? To find out, head up to Fiesole and
An exhibition of contemporary works at Villa Romana, located on the edge of the city, a mile and several centuries from the Pitti Palace, marks the arrival in Tuscany of four new foreign artists. Villa Romana—Winners 2013 is a collection assembled by this year’s fellows,
Filmmaker David Battistella moved to Florence from Canada in 2011 to pursue his dream: writing and producing a feature film based on Ross King’s 2000 book Brunelleschi’s Dome, about the life of Filippo Brunelleschi and the building of Florence’s Cupola. This column, which began
Situated on the right bank of the Arno river is one of the most elegant squares in Florence: piazza Ognissanti. It is home to two of the city’s finest hotels, the St. Regis and the Excelsior, and Palazzo Lenzi, now home to the Honorary French Consulate and the
Stendhal, nom-de-plume of Marie-Henri Beyle, was a nineteenth-century French novelist who, as a young man and budding art connoisseur, travelled through Italy in 1817. His travel journal provides a familiar account of a visit to Florence, but also records Stendhal's distinctive reaction to the literally
Entering the Tribune in the 1580s, visitors must have felt as if they had been dropped into a giant treasure chest that had opened suddenly and surprisingly just for their benefit. The sumptuous octagonal room located in the Uffizi's eastern corridor was topped by a cupola with golden ribs
He signs his works simply as ‘Shunkan.' Shunichiro Kan is a Japanese artisan who moved to Florence from Japan 15 years ago, after completing studies in graphics and economics. However, instead of practising one of Florence's traditional local crafts, this Japanese artisan brought with him a traditional craft
If, like me, you are a fan of the British costume drama series Downton Abbey, you were probably pleased to read in the newspapers recently that the show has generated enough money to pay the 11.75 million pounds so desperately needed for the repairs at Highclere Castle in Berkshire,
Florence's Il Bisonte Gallery's viewable collection of lithographs boasts several top names in twentieth-century art. Visitors to the gallery are welcome to stop into its pleasant, wood-floored room, with its walls lined with racks of signed, poster-sized lithographs. Among the artists featured are Italian Pop
If you are seeking poetic inspiration, try following the footsteps of the nineteenth-century poets who found it at Dante's stone, the Sasso di Dante. A translation of the Divine Comedy published in England in 1814 popularised Dante in British society, and ‘Dante's Stone'
*updated May 5, 2014 Housing sculpture and liturgical items no longer in use in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and its related buildings, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo ...
The bankruptcy of the dairy products multinational corporation Parmalat in December 2003, sent shock waves throughout global financial markets. In what was to prove the biggest corporate fraud so far in European history, Parmalat finished up in a black hole of 14 billion euro of debt, eight times more than
It may seem like we are in the grip of cold, dark winter, but with art exhibits in full bloom, spring starts early in Florence. The 2013 exhibition season opens with a show featuring more than 100 works by the great surrealist, Salvador Dalí at Palazzo Medici Riccardi (
The Cupola is a marvel. An eight-sided marvel. As round as it looks from a distance, up close we can observe that it was built on an octagonal base. Its eight sides are referred to as ‘veils' or in Italian, vele, like the sails of a ship. It
One of Florence's best-known artisans, Vivian Saskia Wittmer, known simply as Saskia, is a German-born bespoke shoemaker who decided to make Florence her home almost two decades ago. With a passion for shoes since she was a young child, after her studies in Germany she apprenticed
Withinwalking distance or a short bus ride from the historic centre and covering theentire block between via Ghibellina and via dell’Agnolo, just before vialeGiovine Italia, Le Murate is one of ...
As one of the lowest-lying areas in Florence, the Santa Croce district bore the brunt of the dire flood that ravaged the city in November 1966, damaging innumerable art works, including several gems (now restored) that are currently exhibited in Santa Croce's refectory room, or Sala del Cenacolo. &
Sometimes our trains of thought can take us in unexpected directions. Recently, I was contemplating what I would do at Christmas, now only a few weeks away. From there, with my gift list already made out in my head, I began thinking about the traditional symbols surrounding the birth of
A new exhibit at the Museo del Tessuto in Prato looks at the history of vintage fashion, a timely topic in an historic moment in which economic realities and dreams of a happier past have put the phenomenon of vintage clothing and lifestyle into the spotlight. From street fashion
When he left for New York in the early 1980s, Ai Weiwei joked that on his return to China his friends would see a ‘new Picasso'; he has since ceased to make any such claims for himself and has left the job to journalists and curators. Unlike many artists
Across the Atlantic, Filippo Mazzei should rightly be considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, together with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. But he is hardly a household name. Filippo Mazzei (1730-1816) met Franklin in London, where he arrived in 1754 to
Bright, bold hues, powerful patterns, decisive lines: the fashion style and designs of Enrico Coveri blasted into the world in the 1970s and continue to enliven and astound to this day. The exhibit Coveri Story, at the new home of the Camera di Commercio in Prato, tells the life and
