Every Italian wedding photographer’s nightmare begins when couples celebrating their Wedding in Florence pose in front of the city’s major landmark.
If you’ve visited Florence Italy during the past 10 years, your fisheye photograph embracing the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, Giotto’s Bell Tower, and St. John’s Baptistery all in one shot probably came out defaced by some hideous piece of scaffolding.
Circling this 800 year old monument like vultures over a dying rabbit and climbing up the walls all the way to the dome, the metal stilts and wooden planks sustaining eternal restoration become every wedding photographer’s photoshop horror story as they must be peeled off the backdrop.
The black muck which is scraped from the green, white and red marble slabs adorning the façade of this renaissance treasure comes from tailpipes of the thousands of scooters, motorcycles, cars, tour buses, public buses, taxis, and trucks that every single day of the year have been allowed to drive around an otherwise ‘off-limits’ historic center.
Tired of all the muckraking, Matteo Renzi, the newly elected mayor of Florence, decided that enough is enough and he has successfully (so far) closed down the area around Piazza Duomo, redirecting traffic through adjacent side streets.
A miracle!
View from via de Cerretani (the poles and chains have now been removed)
