{"id":1142,"date":"2015-08-31T01:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T01:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2015-08-31T13:12:54","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T13:12:54","slug":"florence-day-3-the-galleria-academia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/florence-day-3-the-galleria-academia\/","title":{"rendered":"Florence Day 3 – The Galleria Academia"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had reservations for the Galleria Academia in the morning. It\u2019s another art gallery, not as large or extensive as the Uffizi, but it contains what is arguably (but not very arguably) the most famous statue in the world, Michelangelo\u2019s David. It\u2019s worth the trip to Florence just to see it. It\u2019s just an astonishing piece. I actually know very little about sculpture, but it\u2019s almost impossible to look at this piece and not marvel. And there\u2019s no way to describe it that does it justice. You just have to see it. Artist Giorgio Vasari has said about the piece: \u201cAnyone who has seen Michelangelo\u2019s David has no need to see anything else by another sculptor, living or dead.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to argue with.<\/p>\n

\"Florence3_1\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"Florence3_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We proceeded to look at others anyway. The same room that houses the David also has an interesting set of other statues by Michelangelo, his unfinished pieces, The Prisoners and The Slaves. These are partially carved statues showing human figures that appear to be struggling to pull themselves out of the rock itself. \u00a0Scholars believe they were intentionally left unfinished. Not only to they convey their own message about freedom and dignity, they do a great job of showing some of Michelangelo\u2019s technique and the difficulty of carving human figures out of rock.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, we found a travel agent to get our tickets for the next day\u2019s trip to Varenna, then stopped for a leisurely lunch before heading back to the hotel for a rest. Later we did some shopping and made a gelato stop.<\/p>\n

\"Florence2_7\"<\/a>

Pigeons find a nice cool, shady spot for an afternoon rest on the side of the cathedral.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the evening we walked through the lower level of the Palazzo Vecchio, which is open to the public. There\u2019s another art museum on the upper floors, but we were just too saturated with amazing art already. \u00a0The lower level features the mostly unrestored reception areas and courtyard of the palace with columns and more statuary.<\/p>\n

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\"Florence3_7\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had reservations for the Galleria Academia in the morning. It\u2019s another art gallery, not as large or extensive as the Uffizi, but it contains what is arguably (but not very arguably) the most famous statue in the world, Michelangelo\u2019s …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1],"tags":[28,48,50,49],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italy","category-uncategorized","tag-florence","tag-michelangelo","tag-palazzo-vecchio","tag-the-galeria-academia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}