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Betty Long’s Florence
Moments & People

Betty Long’s Florence

28 mayo, 2018 / By:
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Bye for now, beautiful Florence. When in Florence, exceptional and majestic artworks created by humans wait for you in every corner. Its streets, always crowded with the bustle that comes with it, make Florence the perfect place for lonely travelers’ initiation where they will never feel alone. Where the coffee, although expensive, is exquisite. Where Michelangelo’s David and the Duomo share space with Dior and Chanel. The city welcomed and captivated me from the very beginning with its magic and, although the coin thrown at Il Porcellino insisted on predicting the opposite, I will always want to return to Florence. Thank you, Paco Neumann, for showing me your Florence, especially from the most outstanding balcony I have ever stepped on. Ci vediamo presto!
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Donnini Cutlery or the survival of ancient crafts in Florence
Fashion & Shops & Markets

Donnini Cutlery or the survival of ancient crafts in Florence

7 mayo, 2018 / By:
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I love the combination right in the middle of Florence of modern shops and old handicraft ones with its tradition living through generations. Such trades grant the city vestiges of its medieval past as well as an air of genuine timelessness. For instance, Florentine artisan Leonardo Donnini´s masters sharpening: from knives to professional scissors or devices used to cut leather, which serve also as tools for other artisan colleagues in Florence. «I began working with my father in 1992, when I was still a teenager. Our bottega, shop and laboratory opened in 1930, and was in Via Gioberti. Since then, I have totally inherited my father’s trade, I have become one of the 11 Mastro Arrotini of Italy and I moved the store, Donnini Coltelleria, to Via G. Lanza 70. It is a pleasure for me to show my work and I would love to share my old craft with your readers.» The knife from the movie Hannibal was indeed manufactured in his shop.
Donnini Coltelleria, Via G. Lanza 70 – 50136 Florence…

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Exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi: «Down of a Nation. From Guttuso to Fontana and Schifano»
Art & Culture

Exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi: «Down of a Nation. From Guttuso to Fontana and Schifano»

22 abril, 2018 / By:
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Until 22nd July 2018, Palazzo Strozzi is hosting the exhibition Dawn of a Nation. From Guttuso to Fontana and Schifano, a truly mesmerising exploration of art, politics and society in Italy from the 1950s to the protest years in the late ’60s, with eighty works of art by such masters as Renato Guttuso, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Emilio Vedova, Piero Manzoni, Mario Schifano, Mario Merz and Michelangelo Pistoletto. The exhibition, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, illustrates the effervescence of Italian culture after World War II, the years of the so-called “economic miracle” that marked a major transformation in Italian society, up until the fateful year of 1968. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey setting out from the diatribe between Realism and Abstraction, continuing on to the triumph of Informal Art and leading through the images, gestures and figures of Pop Art in strident juxtaposition with the experimental vision of monochromatic painting, right up to the language of Arte Povera and of Conceptual Art.…

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Central Market of Florence: tradition and modernity in one
Fashion & Shops & Markets

Central Market of Florence: tradition and modernity in one

18 abril, 2018 / By:
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Following the European trend of remodelling old food markets with new food stalls, the first floor of the central market of San Lorenzo (called Mercato Centrale Firenze, MCF) opened in 2014 to commemorate the 140th anniversary of its iron and glass building, which also houses the traditional market of the city on the ground floor. MCF offers confectionery, fresh fish, fried foods and dressings, fruits and vegetables, meat and salamis, mozzarella di bufala, chocolate, cheeses, ice cream, fresh pasta, wines, lampredotto and sandwiches. With seating for 500 people, MCF revitalized an area, which had been previously half-deserted, by residents departing the city centre. All the dishes prepared in the MCF are made with raw ingredients sold in the same central market. Touristphobics shall abstain.
Open every day from ten in the morning to midnight
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Stibbert Park, a romantic English garden on the outskirts of Florence
Outdoors

Stibbert Park, a romantic English garden on the outskirts of Florence

13 abril, 2018 / By:
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There is life beyond the historical centre and, above all, many areas for the bucolic self-recreation. In this not so travelled — excluding joggers and some gite scolastiche — public garden of Montughi, in the vicinity of Florence, there are an exotic Egyptian temple by Frederick Stibbert in the middle of an artificial lake, a circular Hellenic temple with a dome of enamelled tiles, as well as sculptures, caves, benches and picnic areas here and there. One just needs to take a pleasant half-hour walk from the historic centre to reach the Stibbert Museum. Born in Florence in 1838, Frederick Stibbert, a regular traveller and passionate collector of antiques, brought together the three family traditions, the British, the Anglo-Indian and the Italian, which influenced his education and cultural taste. The great project of his life was to transform the family house of Montughi into a museum, which today belongs to the cultural heritage´s of Florence. There´s nothing like to start the day feeling intoxicated by the life and the freshness of these gardens.
Museo-Parco Stibbert
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Mrs. Macis in Borgo Pinti: «A small corner of Paris in Florence»
Fashion & Shops & Markets

Mrs. Macis in Borgo Pinti: «A small corner of Paris in Florence»

2 abril, 2018 / By:
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According to the friend who first recommended it, the atelier shop and lab of Carla Macis stands since 2005 as «a small Parisian corner in Florence.» Carla Macis, who once worked for Emilio Pucci, is the designer of the brand. She is the one in charge of the colourful feminine clothes of vintage appearance, overflowing with good humour and extroverted prints. «I do not create custom clothes, I make my own line in sizes S, M, L”, she tells me. “The process begins with the fabrics, as I was trained as a textile designer and not as a fashion designer, so I pay more attention to research of the materials. However, they result very feminine and tend to enhance the figure of the woman without being explicit or sexy.» Carla Macis gets her inspiration from the 50´s fashion and films. Her clothes have been defined as the «good humour dresses.» These are pieces for women of all ages, between 20 and 70 years old, with a great personality. «For those who, when they put on my clothes, wish to be recognized at the first glimpse.» Undoubtedly, Carla Macis is not afraid to mix. She feels a predilection for wool in all its forms; and creates accessories, too. No wonder she is even recommended by Lonely Planet.
Mrs. Macis – Borgo Pinti 38, 50121 Florence
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Medici villas #3: Medicean villa di Castello – Accademia della Crusca
Medici Traces

Medici villas #3: Medicean villa di Castello – Accademia della Crusca

1 abril, 2018 / By:
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Like the villa of La Petraia, the villa medicea di Castello is in the hills of Castello, a few kilometres from Florence. Built in the 14th century and completely rebuilt in the 16th century, it is mostly famous for its gardens, which compete in splendour with those of Boboli. Also known as Villa Reale, L’Olmo or Il Vivaio, di Castello serves currently as the headquarters of the Accademia della Crusca, Italy’s most prestigious linguistic institution, so the visits are restricted and always subject to prior request. The gardens under management of the Polo Museale di Firenze, the institution in charge of the public museums of the province of Florence, are however more accessible. In addition to the gardens, another must-see is its library, the largest in the country regarding linguistics and history of the Italian language.
Practical info…

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Salvatore Ferragamo and twentieth-century visual culture
Art & Culture

Salvatore Ferragamo and twentieth-century visual culture

15 marzo, 2018 / By:
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Salvatore Ferragamo returned to Italy in 1927 after twelve years in the United States. In 2017, to mark the ninetieth anniversary of his homecoming, the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo presented this exhibition offering an overview of the 1920s, a decade now recognized as an authentic forge of open-minded ideas and experimentation free of ideological constraints and prejudices. Ferragamo chose to settle in Florence in virtue of its acknowledged centrality in the geography of Italian taste and style at a time in which the word “return” was especially meaningful: the return to order in the arts, the return to professional skill and to the great national tradition. Developed in chapters like a coming-of-age story, the exhibition focuses precisely on this trend in the culture of the period. Curated by Carlo Sisi, it takes Ferragamo’s voyage on an ocean liner back to Italy as its guiding thread: a metaphor of his mental journey through the Italian visual culture of the 1920s, the source of the themes and works that were to influence his poetic vision directly or indirectly.
1927, il ritorno in Italia – Till May 2 at Museo Ferragamo, Palazzo Spini Feroni, Florence…

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What San Lorenzo street market hides
Fashion & Shops & Markets

What San Lorenzo street market hides

9 febrero, 2018 / By:
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Starting from Via dell’Ariento, in front of the Cappelle Medicee and its surrounding streets, this walk is flooded with characteristic white canopies around the Central Market of San Lorenzo and its peculiar «wall» of street stalls. As a resident, I am used to this area of town and its typical noise of shopkeepers dragging their mobile stores in the early morning and at night. I sure love it. Walking on the sidewalks not only helps to avoid the crowds of the main street, but also helps to discover some alternative treasures (bars, cafés, restaurants, trattorie, shops … not excessively crowded such as Bondi or Casa del Vino) that are hidden among the usual stalls, where they generally sell the same items, every two or three steps.
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«Radical Utopias»: exhibition at Strozzina-Palazzo Strozzi
Art & Culture

«Radical Utopias»: exhibition at Strozzina-Palazzo Strozzi

13 enero, 2018 / By:
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An experimental approach totally unrelated to the legacy of earlier modernist trends, but closely related to the renewal taking place in other areas of art, began to spread to architecture in Europe in the early 1960s. For the very first time the exhibition «Radical Utopias» celebrates the outstanding creative season enjoyed by the radical movement in Florence in the 60s and 70s. The exhibition brings together in a single venue the visionary work of such groups and figures as 9999, Archizoon, Remo Buti, Gianni Pettena, Superstudio, UFO and Zziggurat. A kaleidoscopic dialogue between objects of design, videos, installations, performances and narratives illustrating another possible world: a critical utopia that had the merit of smashing the status quo of the period, turning Florence into the focal point of a revolution in thinking that had a deep impact on the development of art at the global level.
Until January 21, 2018, at Strozzina-Palazzo Strozzi
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