Engineering in Rome

Today was our first full day in Florence, or Firenze (The Italian way to say it/spell it). The weather was okay, it felt a little chilly with the wind and rained a bit. First we went to the Museum of Florence where we saw Michelangelo’s famous David among other interesting Florentine artifacts. Our tour guide explained that in old Florence they loved their music, so we saw some interesting instruments. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside so I don’t have any pictures to show you of the inside of the museum. David is about 15 feet tall, and there was a lot of debate about what the story behind David was. The conclusion is that it is from the famous story of David and Goliath. We learned a lot about Michelangelo, for example our tour guide told us that he used to section corpses to find out what the different muscles looked like and different parts of the body as well.

Following the museum, we went to Santa Maria del Fiore, a cathedral in Florence. The marble of this church is stripped with the colors of the Italian flag, red, white, and green Inside this church there is a liturgical clock that is still working today, with the help of some electricity and instead of moving clockwise it actually moves counterclockwise. In the front of the church above the altar there is a huge dome by Brunelleschi which was the largest of its time to be built without scaffolding. The last judgment frescoes are on the inside of the dome by Vasari.

They have a copy of the David where it used to stand in the Piazza we went to called Piazzale Michelangelo, however it was under restoration so I don’t have any pictures of that either. We did see a neat looking sculpture called Perseus, by Cellini. This sculpture depicts Perseus beheading Medusa.

Tonight we are all going out for dinner together so tomorrow I will have to tell you all about that tomorrow. The phrase of the day is Dov’è il bagno? Which means “Where is the bathroom?” and is pronounced dohveh eel bahnyoh.