Florence is really interesting for all its history and art, but as Vicki Hallett put it in her great travel piece on Modena, Florence “is basically an American college campus covered in Renaissance art.” It’s not only filled with college students, but tourists, and it’s hard to escape the crowds. So I wanted to write a little bit about the neighborhood we stayed in, Oltrarno, because we really enjoyed it. Just far enough out of the crazy, but not too far to make it inconvenient.

The heart of Oltrarno is Piazza Santo Spirito. A small piazza with a fountain in the center. The Piazza has been around since the 1200s. The church, Santo Spirito, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi (the guy who built the Duomo) and completed in the late 1400s.

The Piazza has a daily market with rotating vendors and is surrounded by restaurants, coffee shops, and bars. It was approximately a 2 minutes walk from our apartment, so we got to know it.

Each morning we took Alice to the Piazza for an espresso. We slowly woke-up with the neighborhood this way. As we drank our cappuccinos, vendors would start to trickle into the Piazza to set up their tables and stalls for the day. We came to recognize a few locals at the coffee shop — an older woman who loves Alice and feeding the birds, another woman, who also loves to feed the birds and has a white mini-poodle named Aukie. The birds are basically pets in this Piazza. We also saw the municipal street cleaners every morning at the coffee shop. It was really nice to see, and attempt to speak to, these familiar faces everyday. Alice gets all the credit for anyone even trying to speak to us.

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Scenes from the market.

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We also loved our apartment. With the exception of the neighbors upstairs who occasionally seemed to be dragging large pieces of furniture across their floor, and two very grumpy women with a grumpy dog, it was perfect. When you walk into the apartment there is a huge living space with tiled floors laid in a herringbone pattern. There are three large shuttered windows in the main room. The ceiling is probably 15 ft high, and the natural light is beautiful. As you move into the apartment the dinning room is in front of you, and the kitchen on the left. The two spacious bedrooms come next. My mom’s bedroom had a wall painted the color of an apricot, which made the room look sunny at all times. Her room has doors that lead out to a balcony overlooking a courtyard. Our room has its own bathroom complete with a shower head in the middle of the ceiling! Very convenient. If the grumpy ladies and their dog do not bother you and you need a place to stay in Florence, we’d be happy to pass on the info.

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Oltrarno has great food – gelato, pizza, pasta, bistecca fiorentina, etc. – is not entirely overrun by tourists, and is close enough to all the main attractions. Would highly recommend if you’re headed to Florence and don’t want to feel like you are in the middle of a stampede or running of the bulls at all times.

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