The character of Florence in every street (even away from the tourist routes)
the editorial initiative
September 10, 2022 – 11:59 am
Forty literary paths in the soul of a city in which no really anonymous alleyway. The first issue with the Corriere Fiorentino on 14 September
from Lorella Romagnoli
Walk the streets of Florence and tell them with its many stories, memories, suggestions, curiosities. No anonymous alley and no country road will ever be truly desolate: the element of interest, the unexpected landmark or social will never fail, explains the writer Vanni Santoni who since the first issues of Florentine courier in the column On the road he guided readers – and sometimes went where readers suggested – to the discovery or rediscovery of known and lesser-known streets and alleys, composing a very personal Florentine fresco where the past is intertwined with the present, where even minimal detail suggestions are generated that explore the souls of a pleasant city to be crossed slowly, even away from the tourist lines. A selection of his adventure on the road will now be available in two volumes, All roads in Florence and All roads through Florence, as a tribute to our newspaper on Wednesday 14th and Wednesday 21st September, enriched by the photographs of Massimo Sestini.
In all there are forty literary paths, twenty for each book, which not surprisingly, before arriving in the historic center, have as their starting point the roads that lead to Florence, that is the directions that lead us towards the circle of the walls. Santoni writes in the introduction to the first volume: Do not believe that the character of Florence does not emerge strong, very strong even from these streets: as some Ladies of Perspective could teach, such as Vasari, Brunelleschi or Leon Battista Alberti, without a plethora of well calculated lines and vanishing lines, it is not possible to obtain the perfection of any center, the cuts and facets of a gem that give it its light are the lines that are projected infinitely into space.
And so, away from the crowds, our journey can start from the pedestrian walkway of the Ponte all’Indiano which gives the suggestion of being in a suspended, muffled reality: here you can get lost between the vertigo of the below and the above and right here, where Florence disappears with its Renaissance, the imagination runs fast. Other stages, other emotions. The silence of via di Bellosguardo, the climb, the effort, the poets’ den, an unusual view of dialogues of beauties; the soul of Florence along via del Monte alle Croci; the celestial sensations in the hidden via di Sant’Ilario in Colombaia. And again in the footsteps of merchants and pilgrims in via Faentina, to be explored to find its true nature as a small path of Compostela. A completely different atmosphere in viale Pietro Nenni than looking at it with the writer’s eye appears enveloped in a gothic atmosphere, not the Florentine gothic of the architecture of Santa Maria Novella, but that of the American television series. An almost Tolkenian flavor is instead felt in the little known Via delle Ballodole near Careggi, once an area of hunters, while the Risorgimento effect can be found in Viale Aleardo Aleardi which owes its name to the poet who never put his wings and took the flight but by virtue of a handful of patriotic and Savoyard songs he earned eternalization here, behind Piazza Tasso, at a rank even equal, in geographical proximity and prominence of the avenue, to that of the supreme Petrarch.
To compose this geography of stories there are, among others, via Pisana, via Bolognese, via delle Forbici, via di Montughi to finally arrive at viale del Poggio Imperiale.
September 10, 2022 | 11:59
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