Wax Women

Thursday I let Florence envelope me, without a plan I just let the city come to me. Rather I let my feet take me where I felt I needed to go. I felt I needed to go to a small clothing market, and then I felt like going to the Pitti Palace (Free unlimited visits as a student!) where I walked some of the gardens, and paid extra to look at the macabre of the macabre.

The Pitti Palace is home to a small natural history museum, so if you REALLY like old taxidermy animals in the very institutional glass cases with beady eyes and sagging coats staring back at you, pay the €6 and go...

Okay I'm being unfair, this is one of the better collections of a large variety of animals, stuffed, throughout the last two centuries. Some of them are very well preserved, while others are laughable, like the droopy 300 year old Hippo (would not have loved carting that carcass all the way form Africa to stuff). If you want to see a lot of birds, and sea creatures this is a great collection.They lacked a "Great American North" section but overall it was a fantastic trip through the animal kingdom...

Then I found the semi-disturbing but really fantastic room of Human Anatomy. As you know, well maybe you don't unless you know me, I have a habit of finding and going to these sort of museums. There was the surgeon's museum in Edinburgh, the Operating Theater in London and now I can add: Museo di Storia Naturale Firenze, and their wax medical model exhibit. Almost all of the pieces were made in the late 18th century. There were dozens of  little pieces showing the bladder, intestines, heart, and everything else you can imagine and then it got a little creepy. Even for me. These skilled creators of wax statues and forms moved into not just making small models or pieces of the human body, which generally feel less human, more objectified, so these artists began creating full humans. 

Which sounds logical and fairly innocent, but no my friends this is ITALIA everything is passionate and artsy so instead of having a human form just laying on a board, stiff, pretty tame, all the figures were in the most dramatic poses. Women had long long braided hair that some were holding, as their back was arched and faced contorted into the most horrifying looks. Eyes fully open, and faces crying for help. It was like walking through a room of some sick torture and disembowelment. Every form looked as if they had been sliced open, living and breathing, and were slowly dying from the horrors inflicted upon them. 

Not to mention they were all propped up on silk pillows and white funeral shrouds. Pretty intense.

And the one that was male and all all nerves was the creepiest.

Okay but I am missing the point, which is that these were the most amazing human forms I have ever seen made out of wax. Madame Tussaud's eat your heart out. Screw seeing a wax Harry Potter come see this woman look like she is being ripped apart while still living!

The point is there is an immense amount of skill put into these things. Every detail needed to be designed and pieces together, painted, placed, and it took forever I am sure, like placing every strand of REAL human hair into the wax head of these things. I can't even imagine where to begin, how?? just how did they make such things? It is really remarkable.

However, if you are like Ryan, or many other people I know, this exhibit will leave your skin and stomach crawling. If you are weird like me, you'll love it.

It was then time to start heading back to school....

But I felt I needed to walk the Ponte Vecchio and drool over very expensive antique jewelry I REALLY wanted to take home with me, only €1200!

Then it was time for school, where we watched a very interesting documentary on a couple of fashion designers and the work put into developing and releasing a perfume.

Then I more or less ran down the street to a gluten-free place Ciro & Sons which I ordered an amazing gluten-free pesto! And got to eat it in an old 18^th century palace of one of the hoity toity of Florence.

Luckily, I also got to meet up with a high school friend and got to walk part of the city with her, Hailey and her mom. It was fun seeing a familiar face in the sea of all unknowns.

Then it was time for History of Modern Italy and more fun facts…

And then I went home, ate left over Risotto, talked with the roommates and then we all went to an Irish pub near the school for a night of pub trivia, which we did okay at, coming in fourth. Then it was time for bed at midnight to get up the next morning for Siena.