Enhance your holiday travel experience by downloading this audio tour of Piazza della Signoria in Forence, Italy.
Great Discoveries self guided audio tour will provide today's tourist with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit Florence Italy's most important public square, the Piazza della Signoria. The piazza has been the political heart of the city from the middle ages to the present day. This magnificent square, packed with people at all hours of the day or night, unfolds like an open-air gallery in which even the statues allude to episodes of the city's civil history.
Facing directly on the square are the Loggia della Signoria, with its three arches, and the dominant Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the city's governments since 1302. It houses several notable pieces of public sculpture and is a meeting place for visitors and Florentines alike. Close by lies the entrance to the most exalted of all of Florence's museums, the Galleria degli Uffizi.
Italian city builders are renowned for effortlessly creating beautiful squares, an art where the Florentines proved generally inept. Only here and at the Piazza del Duomo did they achieve grand and meaningful space. While the Piazza del Duomo provides the focus for the city's religious obsession, the Piazza della Signoria has always been the civic heart of Florence. Though it sets the stage for Florence's main civic palace, the grand and imposing Palazzo Vecchio, too many of its buildings are bland 19th century affairs.
This said; the square is irresistible as a public forum, if not something of a zoo during busy holiday periods. Throughout the past seven centuries people have gathered on the Piazza for celebrations, festivals, public executions, feasts and many great events that were staged here. Wild boar and lions have been released here to provide public entertainment and, on one occasion, stallions were loosed among a group of mares, producing, in the words of one chronicler, 'the most marvelous entertainment for girls to behold. Wheeled traffic has been excluded from the square from as early as 1385 and cars are still banned. Begging, prostitution and gambling were also prohibited but begging apparently has at least survived.
Our carefully researched tour guides you along and identifies the most important statues, insuring that you will clearly understand each item's artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight and amuse with stories from the Piazzas remarkable 800 year history.
View an 18th century replica of Michelangelo's David, standing on the exact spot of the original, and Giovanni da Bolognas famous Rape of the Sabine Women and stand where Savonarola's infamous bonfires of the vanity once blazed.
Guides are recorded in easy to follow segments that are readily located your iPod. This 1 hour and 19 minute 14 track, audio tour is designed to work with an easy to read map of the piazza, with clearly numbered locations, which coordinate with the track numbers and descriptions displayed on your iPod.
Author/Spoken By Bill Browne / Christopher Kent
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Enhance your holiday travel experience by downloading this audio tour of Piazza della Signoria in Forence, Italy.
Great Discoveries self guided audio tour will provide today's tourist with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit Florence Italy's most important public square, the Piazza della Signoria. The piazza has been the political heart of the city from the middle ages to the present day. This magnificent square, packed with people at all hours of the day or night, unfolds like an open-air gallery in which even the statues allude to episodes of the city's civil history.
Facing directly on the square are the Loggia della Signoria, with its three arches, and the dominant Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the city's governments since 1302. It houses several notable pieces of public sculpture and is a meeting place for visitors and Florentines alike. Close by lies the entrance to the most exalted of all of Florence's museums, the Galleria degli Uffizi.
Italian city builders are renowned for effortlessly creating beautiful squares, an art where the Florentines proved generally inept. Only here and at the Piazza del Duomo did they achieve grand and meaningful space. While the Piazza del Duomo provides the focus for the city's religious obsession, the Piazza della Signoria has always been the civic heart of Florence. Though it sets the stage for Florence's main civic palace, the grand and imposing Palazzo Vecchio, too many of its buildings are bland 19th century affairs.
This said; the square is irresistible as a public forum, if not something of a zoo during busy holiday periods. Throughout the past seven centuries people have gathered on the Piazza for celebrations, festivals, public executions, feasts and many great events that were staged here. Wild boar and lions have been released here to provide public entertainment and, on one occasion, stallions were loosed among a group of mares, producing, in the words of one chronicler, 'the most marvelous entertainment for girls to behold. Wheeled traffic has been excluded from the square from as early as 1385 and cars are still banned. Begging, prostitution and gambling were also prohibited but begging apparently has at least survived.
Our carefully researched tour guides you along and identifies the most important statues, insuring that you will clearly understand each item's artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight and amuse with stories from the Piazzas remarkable 800 year history.
View an 18th century replica of Michelangelo's David, standing on the exact spot of the original, and Giovanni da Bolognas famous Rape of the Sabine Women and stand where Savonarola's infamous bonfires of the vanity once blazed.
Guides are recorded in easy to follow segments that are readily located your iPod. This 1 hour and 19 minute 14 track, audio tour is designed to work with an easy to read map of the piazza, with clearly numbered locations, which coordinate with the track numbers and descriptions displayed on your iPod.
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