"The infamously difficult to photograph Duomo remains impossibly hard to fit into an ideal frame, thus provoking an ever growing crowd of tourists just determined to accomplish this impossible feat, convinced that one more snap will grant them this unattainable picture."
However, to capture Florence in a single frame, literally, the view from the Boboli gardens outside the Pitti Palace is magnificent. It’s so photogenic, as yellow-ochre buildings and slanting rooftops congregate around the Duomo set against a backdrop of the Appenine Mountains. Enhanced in the foreground by the palace itself, even a seemingly intrusive car park just adds to the Florentine aura as Vespas and Fiat five hundreds parked alongside each other.
Of course, there are the two stereotypical Florentine views, the Duomo and the David, religiously featured on adjacent pages in your guidebook given their alliterating titles. The infamously difficult to photograph Duomo remains impossibly hard to fit into an ideal frame, thus provoking an ever growing crowd of tourists just determined to accomplish this impossible feat, convinced that one more snap will grant them this unattainable picture. However, capturing Florence in pictures involves more than just duplicating your guidebook, and I found out that there was more to Florence than the pricey clothes shops and the renaissance artwork.
On via Panciale, a seemingly derelict building proposes to make a political statement about one of this touristy citys backstage areas, a scene of urban crime and squatting in the past. At a second glance, the graffiti covered building is in fact covered in hundreds of dollar bills, forming an installation by Florentine street artist Vaclav Pisvejc. Once completely covered, the bottom of the building is now bare, where passers by have interacted with the installation and indeed proven its once spray painted on point –‘Capitalism is not possible.’ Nonetheless, the higher parts of the building remain untouched, and Pisvej believes the residents to have understood his message, as they work towards improving this area, now an emblem of behind-the-scenes urban beauty.