The Divine Comedy (From Inferno to Paradiso)

   During this trip my dad introduced me to the Dan Brown books and I instantly fell in love with the DaVinci Code Series. The latest book Dan Brown wrote was called Inferno and the first half of the book takes place in Florence so luckily we got to do a tour of the Palazzo Vecchio ( a palace used by the Medicis) called Inferno Places. Our tour started by going through a little door that led to a secret room with a staircase. We hiked up the staircase where we got to another floor. The Medicis, who ruled a lot of Tuscany, used this as a staircase back in the 1400's. We then got to a door that led into the Hall of Five Hundred. It is a huge room with enormous paintings on the walls and ceilings. 

 I thought it was so amazing how these pictures are painted, they are about 40 ft by 30 ft! Our tour guide told us that if you wanted to get married here it would cost you 80,000 euros (worth 110,350 US dollars).

    We then went up to the very top floor called the La Soffitta or The Garret. There are tons of wooden beams parallel and intersecting with each other. What is so amazing about these wooden beams is that not only do they hold up the roof but they also hold up the paintings on the ceilings of The Hall of Five Hundred. If you were to fall down through the wood you would rip a painting on the ceiling and fall to your death (spoiler: this happens in the book).

We then went down a floor and saw the door that leads to the Vasari Corridor. The Vasari Corridor connects the Pitti Palace (another Medici palace) and the Palazzo Vecchio stretching over a kilometer long and over the Ponte Vecchio (a bridge). We didn't go in the corridor because it was a different tour. 

    We then headed to the Map Room and learned about one of the Medicis' main symbols they used: a Turtle with a Sail.  The Turtle symbolizes a leader analyzing a decision and thinking about it while the Sail symbolizes that once the leader makes his decision he needs to act quickly. We also passed a fake death mask of the poet of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri.
In the Divine Comedy there are three parts Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. It is a 14,233 lined poem and explains Dante's journey through seven steps of hell to where he goes to paradise after the long journey.

We then went into the Map Room where I started quickly searching for the Map of Armenia. In the book the two main characters find The Map of Armenia and behind it is a secret door. 

Sure enough, the tour guide took a key out of her pocket and opened the door. 

We walked through it to another room where there were steps leading up to a window. I opened the blind and I could see everybody in the Hall of Five Hundred except they couldn't see me because I was looking through a little grate.


It was so amazing. In Dante's book one of the parts of Inferno is Palazzo Vecchio and that is the Hell.

   Our tour ended so the five of us explored the other palace art we hadn't seen. I thought it was cool how on the second floor the pictures on the ceilings were of gods and directly below them on the first floor was the portraits of the Medicis because they considered themselves like gods. Some facts about the Medici Reign-

1. They were like dictators 

2. They would get people's money and use it to pay artists who would paint amazing paintings of t

3. They started the Renaissance and ruled for about 300 years

    After seeing all the beautiful sculptures and paintings we crossed the Ponte Vecchio and got some lunch at a little sandwich and pizza place that we absolutely adored. We then walked in the rain a couple of blocks to a Gelateria my mom's friend suggested to us. It was the best ice cream we had ever had. 

My mom got this weird pie ice cream while Jacob got vanilla, Maggie got cookies, and my dad and I got dark chocolate orange which was the best ice cream ever. It was like Pardise. Today we had gone from Inferno (Hell) to Paradiso (Paradise). It was a really fun day and if you get the chance to go to Italy you have to GO TO FLORENCE.