Gillian Knows Best Florence guide

Where I go for breakfast sandwiches and a Renaissance overload

This month I am switching the schedule up a little bit and sharing a guide for paid subscribers at the beginning of the month and a free post later in August.

I am not Florence’s biggest fan. I know I know. This is an unpopular opinion. My explanation is that I need a little chaos and decay. Rome and Venice and Naples (and you too Ponza) are my places.

Florence is too orderly. Too small. Too Renaissance for me. I am not the only one.

Mind you, McCarthy herself was a little jaded back in the 1950s about Florence and its too-famous golden history. “For the contemporary taste, there is too much Renaissance in Florence,” she wrote in “The Stones of Florence.” “Too much ‘David,’” she went on, dismissively, “too much rusticated stone, too much glazed terra-cotta, too many Madonnas with Bambinos.

Joseph Addison

Obviously, Florence is objectively beautiful. You should absolutely visit. The food is delicious and the art is ravishing. The train station, a masterpiece of Italian Rationalism, is one of my favorites in Italy.

So, with that slightly cranky grain of salt here is my guide to Florence.