Serendipity in Florence

The day we had earmarked for spending in the area around Il Duomo and a visit to its interior  turned out to be wet. I have to say that it rained at some stage every day we were in Florence, generally quite lightly. But this day was wet most of the time. We had not, as previously mentioned, reserved tickets to go and climb the Bell Tower, nor for climbing into the Dome itself. In theory you can visit the inside of the Cathedral for free, but when we arrived at about 10,00 a.m. there was a very long queue. Supposedly it was about two hours long. We walked to the frint where the entrance was roped off and no-one in the queue was going anywhere, so that was 2 hours plus however long it was before they let anyone in, and as I say it was wet. We sat and contemplated the outside of the cathedral for about half an hour, watching people come and go and the queue not move an inch, and trying to take  reasonable photographs of the outside,  and then  we decided to have a wander about, preferably along some small overhung streets as the rain was getting harder. 

This was how we fell across the Baptistry of San Lorenzo. It's huge and, having looked it up since, extremely important in Florentine history and architecture but what drew us in were the cloisters. You could just catch a glimpse of them from the street and we're suckers for cloisters at the best of times so we coughed up 9 euros apiece and walked in. They were lovely. Also dry.  As a bonus the tickets weren't; for the cloisters per se but the Medici Library which was on the second storey and fabulous. 

yup, very wet. This is half the long side of the Church, it's huge. 

the cloisters at ground level

and from the second storey

and a view of the first and second storeys

the Medici library 

 above and below the reading room 

yet again a magnificently painted ceiling and the question has to be why? did medieval Florentines spend most of their time on the floor? 

We didn't know much about San Lorenzo before we went to Florence and even now we know very little. Twenty or thirty years ago we'd have been more prepared, have read up more and known more about what to look at, not just here but Florence in general. And that's very laudatory but actually I wonder if perhaps just wandering about and following our noses and going to places that catch our eye and interest isn't in the end more enjoyable. I couldn't have appreciated the cloisters more if I had known the date they were built or who had designed them, we went to see them because we just like cloisters. And the Medici library was just a wonderful extra.