By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

FLORENCE, Italy, Sept. 14, 2025 — I know now that I really needed to visit here. We’ve come to Florence primaily because it was on my wife Mary Riche’s bucket list. But I needed to be here, too.

I needed to come to genuflect, not because years ago I was a Catholic and here in Florence, nearly everybody spends a whole lot of time in historic Catholic churches. Instead, I needed to come here and genuflect in thanks to the Italian people for initially inspiring, then preserving, displaying and sharing the wondrous art, music, history and culture they have.

I’ve never learned as much in a week of travel as I have in our first week here. We spent five days getting to and enjoying Venice, as I told you in two previous columns, and now we’re doing Florence. The Piedmont region of the northwest and Milan await us in the week ahead.

Didn’t I say the other day that the lives of us RicheBurgers seem blessed?

 

The roof-top view we had of the dome of Florence’s “Duomo,” a name for the “main church” in any Catholic city. (Photo by Paola Vojnovic)

Late Thursday afternoon, we arrived in this west central Italian city by high-speed train. We had learned enroute that Paola Vojnovic, the tour guide we’d hired to show us Florence, had picked up a couple tickets for us for a 9 p.m. Thursday concert. The regional Orchestra Della Toscana, plus a 100-voice choir and 4 outstanding soloists were performing “Et Lux Perpetua” in Florence’s Basilica di Santa Croce.

Though a bit tired, we knew we couldn’t miss a musical event like they were having, especially in a famous basilica like Santa Croce. So after a tram ride and a good walk, we found the fine and spacious apartment we had booked for our 4-day stay here. We got some valuable info from our host, quickly unpacked, dressed up, walked out front to catch a taxi — and there seemed to be none in our residential neighborhood.

But we were saved by a friendly young student-teacher of art, Manuel Pascual, a Spaniard finishing his studies here. As he was walking by us two bewildered old strangers, he kindly asked if he could help. He used his phone to coax a cab to pick us up and get us to the concert minutes before it began.

It was beyond fabulous!

In a crowd of 1,000 or more, we listened to an inspiring opener of “Marche Religious” by the 18th/19th-century hometown composer, Luigi Salvatore Cherubini, and then the evening’s feature, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s full awesome “Requiem.”

As the music soared, we browsed the basilica, which turned out to be the largest church I’ve ever visited, and yet the acoustics seemed perfect. All around us were huge classical paintings and sculptures, with elegant spiritual décor, too. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the crypts of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Rossini, and other notables of local and world renown.

What a way to spend your first evening in Florence!

This is a busy, bustling city of 362,000, the centerpiece of a metropolitan area of about a million people spreading into the region of Tuscany. Besides all the art and history that draws visitors, so does shopping. The big names of global retail are located up and down the tiny streets and around the plazas — Ferregamo, Gucci, Armani, Apple, Dior, Prada, and more.

It was interesting to learn that seaside Venice has seafood to die for, but they also have major pork production in that Veneto region. And, as we saw on the train, there are cornfields stretching all the way to Florence, where leading restaurants offer lots of bistecca — delicious steak (and the Florentines insist “rare” is the way to go).

It’s also interesting that, as ancient as we all know Italy is, it really is a young nation, younger than the United States. Here, there were the early City States, then the Roman Empire, then the conquest by Napoleon and rule by France, then finally the uniting of Italy in 1861. The Mussolini regime ruled in the 1930s and early ’40s, joining Germany and Japan in the “Axis” that the U.S. and other allies fought. In 1946, real freedom finally came.

One more point of historical and political interest: I’ve learned here that there is a trend among major Italian cities today in electing women mayors. That’s true here in Florence, where 49-year-old Sara Funaro in 2024 was the first woman here ever elected mayor.

We RicheBurgers highly recommend that if you really want to understand the Italy of both past and present, you hang out with art historians.

That’s what we did in Venice, where our volunteer guide was our longtime friend Amy Namowitz Worthen, a print maker, photographer, independent scholar and art historian. For decades, she’s divided her time between homes in Venice and Des Moines.

In Florence, we hired Amy’s friend and colleague, Paola Vojnovic, another art historian with degrees in the field from Arizona State University and Syracuse University, to be our guide. She has based in this city since 2006. She is a 50-year-old native of Sarajevo in the former country of Yugoslavia, the daughter of a Serb father and a Croatian mother.

That glimpse of her personal background should tell you that, of course, she knows art history, and since she’s here, she is especially authoritative about the “Renaissance.” And her roots in Yugoslavia, especially her early teenage years in 1991 and ’92 when her home country exploded in war, should tell you that she knows suffering, loss and displacement.

“I don’t often talk about the war, I don’t watch TV and don’t focus on the news,” she told us. “I prefer to focus on the beauty of the Renaissance.”

That was the period of 300 or so years from the 14th to the 16th centuries, when Florence became “the cradle of the Renaissance” and its artists seemed to make art start imitating life — making it come alive.

“Personally, what moves me is the humanity of it all,” Vojnovic said. The stories the great artists started telling back then, in many ways show “how little we’ve changed over time. And here in Florence, we can see art by the greats, in the places where it was created, right where they intended for it to be seen.”

I asked her if the beauty and humanity of the Renaissance mean more to her because she was a war refugee herself.

“When you lose a country — when it’s taken away from you — you don’t really belong anywhere anymore,” Vojnovic said. “I was 14 when that war started. The 20 years I’ve lived here is the longest I’ve lived anywhere. When I came here in 2006, I was 31 years old, and I’d meet these Florentines who’d never left their home city. They’d had the same friends since kindergarten. I remember being so envious of that, how rooted they felt.

“But they’d tell me, ‘Well, we envy you because you’ve been able to see the world,’ and there is truth to that with my background. What it’s become is that anywhere I hang my hat is ‘home’.”

We laughed over the thought that in the U.S., people of the ages of us RicheBurgers — 78 and 77 — are often said to be “stuck in the ’60s.” I suggested Paola Vojnovic “may be stuck in the Renaissance,” and she said if indeed she’s “stuck,” it seems a good place for her.

When you’ve been a war refugee, as Paola Vojnovic was, focusing instead on the Renaissance seems a good thing to do. (Photo by Mary Riche)

She talked and showed us the Renaissance for 9 or 10 hours over two days, especially about “the holy trinity of the High Renaissance” in Florence — Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raffaello Sanrio.

Was there any greater talent in that era than Michelangelo?

“No,” she said. “Think about his talents — painting, sculpture, architecture, and you want to guess what I think his greatest was? His poetry. In it, he shares with us his inner person.”

She led us to up-close experiences with two of Michelangelo’s greatest sculptures — the “Pieta” he did here when he was in his 70s, and “David,” which he completed as a young man. No matter how many photos you’ve seen of each of those sculptures, you cannot comprehend the real greatness of them until you stand right in front of them.

Mary Riche, the feminist and activist that she is, brought important perspective to our art experiences here, asking about the roles of women in the Renaissance and other early eras.

“You’re surrounded by the work of men, and my interest will always be the women of the time — in addition to the men,” she said.

She particularly loved the stories Vojnovic told of two women in the Medici family, which led Italy for 300 years or more.

Early-on, Cosimo I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was having a palace built for the family. His wife Eleanor of Toledo said the new place was fine but she wanted more fresh air and green space for their growing family. Eventually, they had 11 children. She bought her own home, the Pitti Palace, across the Arno River in the countryside. She completed the design and construction of that home, and also ordered construction of the Boboli Gardens around the property. Those became the model for the gardens of Versailles in France.

And three centuries later, the last of the Medicis was Anna Maria, who had no heirs. She willed the vast Medici family art collection and substantial amounts of their property to the City of Florence, stipulating that it would always remain in Florence “for people from around the world to come and enjoy.”

Said Mary Riche: “Those stories are another example of how important women are in history, which you learn when you ask the question.”

You do wonder how Italians of today — government, business, the citizenry — can financially sustain the display and essential care of all the magnificent art, architectural and cultural treasures that are all around them.

How?

The answer is all around us here — a constant flow of art-loving visitors from around the world. And, oh, do they bring money!

Cosimo I, one of the early Medicis, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.

 

The Arno River flowing through Florence.

“Santa Maria Maddalena Penitente,” or Mary Magdalene, carved in wood by Donatello, was one of our favorites. (Photo by Mary Riche)

David. (Photo by Mary Riche)

David, up closer. (Photo by Mary Riche)

 

Michelangelo’s “Pieta.” (Photo by Mary Riche)

 

“Pieta,” up close, and notice the detail in the carving. (Photo by Mary Riche)

 

On our visit Sunday to the Boboli Gardens at the Pitti Palace in Florence. (Photo by Carmen Perez)

 

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