The Vespa and Piaggio Museum (Pontedera)

Sunday, March 22, 2009

This is a fantastic museum! It’s not so famous, but if you love Vespa, at least if you liked Vacanze Romane (the movie), you really have to see it, it also has free entrance!
I’ve been there some weeks ago and it really amazed me… I still have an old Piaggio moped called “Grillo” and I’m quite sentimental about it, and the Vespas are so cool!

The Vespa Museum is located in Pontedera, a small city between Florence and Pisa, where the historical Piaggio factory sis producing scooters and motorcycles since 1884.
The Piaggio Museum was inaugurated on the 29th March 2000, it occupies 3,000 sq. m. of what used to be the old company toolshop, a smart conversion of an industrial area for cultural purposes.

The Museum's halls display Vespa and Gilera collections, with the most significant of Piaggio's products.
The Vespas on display are the most beautiful and the rarest of their kind, such as the prestigious Vespa painted by Salvador Dalì or the record-breaking Vespas.
Beside the Vespa are the products that also made the history of the company, mopeds such as “Ciao” and “Sì” that marked an epoch and the multi-functional Ape, the small truck that artisans and retailers over the generations have used and appreciated for its versatility, and which had an important role in reconstructing Italy after the second world war.

I took hundreds of pictures, there are some incredible Vespas!
Here are some examples of the amazing Vespas of the Piaggio Museum that I portrayed:

Some classic Vespas, behind you can see a couple of Ape trucks

A very long Vespa!

This Vespa was painted and autographed by Salvador Dalì in 1962

This "Siluro Vespa" (that means rocket) in 1951 beated all standing kilometre records with a time of 21.4 seconds and an average speed of 171.1 km/h.

the special Vespa Alpha, designed for the movie "Get Smart"

A giant Vespa and a cow-Vespa

Vespa 150 T.A.P. a very special Vespa, produced between 1956 and 1959, used by the Foreign Legion and French paratroopers.

David LaChapelle Exhibition in Florence

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

From February 28 2009 To May 06 2009 the Galleria Poggiali e Forconi in Florence will house an exhibition by David LaChapelle.
After 10 years the world-famous photographer of celebrities David LaChapelle is back in Florence with a great free exhibition of his works.
The David LaChapelle exhibition is divided into four main sections: Deluge, Recollections in America, Star System and Heaven to Hell.

This exhibition will be focused on last works of the photographer (Awakened and Recollections in America) side by side with his more famous works, as: Pietà with Courtney Love, Hi Bitch and Bye Bitch with Paris Hilton and Bon Apetite with Naomi Campbell.

Plus there’s a video of the backstage of his work Deluge.

I can’t miss this great exhibition, and entrance is even free!!!

Where: Galleria Poggiali e Forconi Via della Scala, 35/A
Project Room Via Benedetta, 3 /rosso
Florence

When: From February 28 2009 To May 06 2009
Last Through: May 6th, 2009

Opening hours: monday - saturday 9.30 am - 7.30 pm
sunday by appointment
Free entrance

Florence as it used to be - Firenze com'era

Thursday, January 29, 2009

I visited this museum during the European Heritage Day, a special day when all the museums are free for everyone.

The museum is located beside the Convento of the Oblate, accommodated in a building with a beautiful garden and a cloister. We had free entrance but usually the ticket is really cheap, only 2,70 euros.
The museum is on the ground floor of the building, and is made of two distinguished sections. The first is about the topographical museum: more than an topographical museum: it is a documented history of the representation of a city seen through the eyes of the citizens in the ages. Maps in the past were difficult to trace, obviously bird-eye photos didn’t existed yet, so it was hard to calculate exactly distances. Maps used to give not only information about the geography, but also about cities, activities, points of interest.

the cloister and garden of the museum

Here is exposed the ancient and famous Map of the Chain (“la pianta della catena”), called in that way it has a frame decorated with a chain.
It’s really not a plant… is not more a general view Florence, an axonometric projection realized at the end of 1400, and is really big, it takes the entire wall.
It’s so beautiful and painted with an incredible care for details; above all it’s a witness of how looked Florence during the renaissance: a densely inhabited large city, still with cultivations out of the town-walls, encircled from its walls studded with doors. Every single palace and church are faithfully reproduced and clearly recognizable: Palazzo Vecchio Santa Maria Novella, the Cathedral… Arno river slides and is still a city fulcrum of people and activity: you can see people on the riverside fishing, bathing, building a bridge…

the Map of the Chain ("Pianta della Catena")

Besides the Plant of the Chain the museum conserve some other ancient pieces: the keys of the doors of the city: the ones of Porta San Frediano, Porta Santo Spirito and Porta San Gallo, enormous keys with their leather bags; they were of property of a private collector, once he died the keys were given back to the city of Florence.
Others ancient maps and city representation of Florence are exposed in the museum. There are also paintings, that show various parts of the city and how they changed through the centuries. A beautiful painting that shows the public execution of Girolamo Savonarola in the Piazza dell Signoria.

the keys of the doors of Florence

At the end of the room there’s also a plastic that represent the historical center of Florence how it was befor the reorgaziation made at the end of ‘800.

the plastic of the hystorical center bofore '800

In the second room of the museum are shown some archaeological artefacts found in the eighties, when piazza della Signoria had been re-pavemented: finally we can see some traces of the ancient roman Florence. The artefacts are few but interesting, and you can also find a really interesting plastic of Florence as it was in the roman age.

the plastic of Florence in the Roman Age

Palazzo Pitti - Pitti Palace

Thursday, January 8, 2009

The gallery is second only to the Uffizi in importance, and is notable for the works of Rubens, Pietro da Cortona, Tiziano e Raffaello (Titian and Raphael).

Begun in 1458 from an original design by Brunelleschi, the architecture was inspired by ancient Roman buildings. An enormous affair, it was built for Luca Pitti, a one time friend of the Medici who became jealous of their power and turned against them. The palace was a blatant attempt at one-upmanship, but the fortunes of the Pitti family soon faded, and the powerful Medici family acquired the building, still uncompleted, in 1540.

It was to become the family seat in Florence and it was Cosimo´s wife, Eleanor of Toledo (whose dowry paid for the purchase), who was to transform the hillside behind the palace into the Boboli garden.

Palazzo Pitti remained the principal Medici residence until the last male Medici heir died in 1737: the Medici dynasty became extinct and the palace passed to the new Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Austrian House of Lorraine.

The palace is home to eight separate museums: Galleria Palatina (Palatine Gallery, probably the most important one), begun by Cosimo de’ Medici the second in 1620; Gallery of Modern Art; Costume Gallery; Museo degli argenti (Silver Museum); Porcelain Museum; Boboli Garden.

Opening hours:

Open Tuesday to Sunday 8,15 – 18,50

Closed Monday, New Year’s Day, May 1st and Christmas Day.

Tickets:
Full Price: € 6,50Reduced: € 3,25
Free admission for people under 18 or over 65, students and teachers of faculties of architecture, cultural heritage conservation, educational sciences, or of Fine Arts Academy, tour guides.

Share your experience about Palazzo Pitti and Florence on Trivago!

The Uffizi Gallery

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

This is probably the most famous museum in the world. Its collection of Primitive and Renaissance paintings comprises several universally acclaimed masterpieces of all time, including works by Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Fra Beato Angelico, Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaelo, Michelangelo and Caravaggio. The German, Dutch and Flemish masters are also present in the Uffizi museum with important paintings by Dürer, Rembrandt and Rubens.

The Uffizi Gallery is located on the upper floor of the big building planned by Giorgio Vasari from 1560, which housed the administrative offices of the Tuscan State. The Gallery was created by Francesco I, and then enriched and enlarged by other members of the Medici family, who were great collectors of paintings, sculpture and arts in general. The collection was then rearranged and enlarged by the Lorraine Grand-dukes, who succeeded the Medici family, and finally by the Italian State.

The building also houses other relevant collections: the Contini Bonacossi Collection and the Collection of Prints and Drawings (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi).The Vasari Corridor, the raised passageway connecting the Uffizi with Pitti Palace, was also built by Giorgio Vasari in 1565: the Corridor is hung with an important collection of 17th-century paintings and the famous collection of self-portraits of artists.

Tickets:
Full price 6,50 €
Reduced 3,25 €
Free admission for people under 18 or over 65, students and teachers of faculties of architecture, cultural heritage conservation, educational sciences, or of Fine Arts Academy, tour guides.

Opening hours:
Open Tuesday to Sunday 8,15 – 18,50Closed Monday, New Year’s Day, May 1st and Christmas Day.
For Booking: +39(055) 294883
Booking charge: 4 €

Double Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and his wife, by Piero della Francesca

Self-Portrait, by Raphael

The Head of Medusa, by Caravaggio

The Birth of Venus, by Botticelli

Bacchus, by Caravaggio

Here are two nice videos that I found on Youtube which show the Uffizi tour :-)

Palazzo Strozzi

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Palazzo Strozzi has been built during a long time and various architects planned it: the result is an harmonic and perfect example of reinassance palace, the most regular, homogenous and symmetrical one, in a time which the symmetry and the regularity of shapes were very appreciated gifts. This palace was the house of the Strozzi family, an important dynasty of rich florentine bankers, who built this magnificent building to demonstrate its own wealth, to use it as personal residence, but also for its own transactions and businesses.

The private house is placed on the two superior plans, while on the ground floor, around the inner court, there were shops and banks: the court was opened the public and it was shaped like a real public city square, an extension in the private space of the public city.

Externally the Palace is solid and compact: a facade in solid stone, with a “bugnato” surface with large sketched blocks, with regular windows, diversified for level: square small and to the ground floor, double lancet windows closed in an arc to the superior floors.
Even in the inner court, in the rooms and in the plant, we can see the perfect symmetry.
The inner court is just so beautiful, it’s easy to imagine it full of people busy with business in their daily lives, walking in the rooms and stepping up the big elegant stairs.

Today Palazzo Strozzi is an important museum with international expositions of paintings sculptures, architecture, which periodically change.
The Palace is in the historical centre of Florence, easily reachable by bus or with a 5 minutes walk from Santa Maria Novella Station.

Palazzo Strozzi

Museo dell'Opificio delle Pietre Dure - Museum of Semiprecious Stones Factory

Friday, November 21, 2008

The Museum is located in via degli Alfani, right behind the Accademia Museum (you'll easily recognize it from people waiting in line outside). In this museum there's never to wait in line, it's quite unknow to most people, but it sure deserve a visit.

This museum collects some wonderful objects originally made in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a 400 years old handcraft laboratory, founded by Ferdinando I and originally located in the Uffizi museum. Nowadays the Opificio is an important restauration laboratory, and the museum tells us the story of this great and still unknown italian art.

The building of the museum is pretty ancient, and it was restored in a modern but sober and elegant way by prof. arch. Natalini.

The exposition collects beautiful objects made with semiprecius stones of every kind, realised with several different techiques:: inlay, painting, sculpture...

The hands that have worked on stones were so skillful, they have realized designs full of details, colors and complex forms, cutting accurately thousands of stone slabs and assembled them together in order to create inlays of absolute perfection. Flowers, leaves, animals, dead natures, represented on every type of object: tables, fireplaces, tobacco cases, pots, church furnishingses. The colors are thousands, as much as the stone varieties, fine cut and joined, with their tonalities and texture that give an incredible three-dimensional effect.

Tables are sure the more numerous objects and are just amazing: generally they have a black polished stone plan, on which have been realized the inlay or painting designs; some are realized with mixed techniques. Stones create some spectacular effects: a brown stone, streaked as a wood table becomes a violin; a pink stone that vanishes in orange becomes a peach, a red diaspro becomes a complicated coral branch… they have been realized with an incredible handicraft precision, the details are perfect, I assure that it gives just a three-dimensional effect to you, and is amazing how the choice of the right stone can reproduce exactly the color and the texture of another material.

Besides the plans of the tables the objects I appreciated most are: a majestic enormous Russian fireplace, entirely realized in green emerald diaspro and copper, and one wooden piece of furnture with several trays, mad in 1600, really amazing: in the form it imitates a rinaissance palace of Firenze, every little tray is decorated with a stone slab representing an exotic bird... Really a wonderful object, it would be perfect in my room!

At ground floor there's the exposure of the objects exited from the warehouses of the factory, while on the first floor there's a small section dedicated to the factory: it collects several ancient instruments for working and cutting hard stones, and a rich collection of stone samples used in the objects: marbles of every color, quartzes, basalts, graniti…

I really love this museum, and sure suggest you to visit, the entrance is very cheap (just 2 euro), but for students is free.

Inside the museum pictures are not allowed.

Opificio delle Pietre Dure

Via Alfani, 78 - 50121 Firenze (Italy)

tel: +39 055 26511

fax: +39 055 287123

Monday - Saturday: 8.15-14.00

Thursday: 8.15-19.00

email: opd@beniculturali.it

an amazing table decorated with birds, flowers and fruits

an example of the decorations in semiprecious stones