Customer Reviews
Florence, here we come! - By: The Intrepid Traveller, 15 Jun 2008 
If this book doesn't inspire you to hop on the next flight to the Renaissance city of Florence, nothing will. Lisa McGarry is an American who has spent a good deal of her life living in faraway places - as a child in Brazil, as a student in Belgium, Singapore & Hong Kong. But she has found her true home in Florence where she lives with her daughter in the very center of this beautiful city. Her understanding & her love for this city are apparent in each chapter as she takes us around the city, from piazza to piazza offering her own insight into the aged paving stones & moss covered buildings that surround each special place.
Florence has literallly dozens of piazzas, some monumental, some intimate, some exhibiting treasures of medieval & renaissance architecture, some a bit shabby. McGarry has given us a baker's dozen of her favourites & it is hard to argue with her selections. Of course she includes the standard stops on a tourist itinerary - Piazza del Duomo, Piazza della Republica, Piazza della Signoria. But she treats us to a couple of out-of-the way places, too. It seems that the piazza & church of Santo Spirito is one of her favourites, as is a wide spot in a nearby side street, the Piazza della Passera.
Of course, McGarry's insight & verbal vignettes are an integral part of this book, but possibly the most useful aspect are the beautiful hand-drawn plans of each piazza. It is here that her training as an architect is most apparent. Drawn in the rich terra cotta tones reminiscent of the roofs of the buildings surround each piazza, she points out the many attractions offered by each piazza, from the monumental buildings to the quiet cafes to the best place for an ice cold gelato.
If there are a couple of suggestions for an eventual future edition, I would have liked the maps to be a bit larger in format, & possibly a few more of the author's photos. The larger format book might not have fit so conveniently into the tourist's backpack, but this book is not a travel guide per se; it is reallly the author's personal story of her discovery & love affair with this most charming of Italian cities. It is not aimed at the "36 hour, two nights & three days" tourist; rather a traveler, armchair or otherwise, who truly searches for an insider's insight will find this charming little book a source to be treasured over the years.
If this indeed was the target, McGarry seems to have hit it right on the head.
A lovely book - By: J. Cotton, 31 May 2008 This is undoubtedly a more-than-usuallly gorgeous book. The cover is a lovely textured terracotta-coloured thing & the printing is high quality with some very tasteful maroon detailing. Add to this a foldout watercolour map for each piazza, & a ribbon bookmark in another fine rich terracotta shade, & you have more than enough visual appeal to make you pick the book up. Thankfully there's also more than enough substance in the text too to stop you putting it down. Taking each of Florence's piazzas in turn the author then gets to hang stories, observations & history around each one. So the Piazza de' Pitti features plenty of details about Ms McGarry's life, this being where she lives, as well as plenty about the Pitti Palace, the Boboli Gardens, & the area's famous residents. Similarly the Arno gets dealt with when she writes about the piazzetta in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio & the Medici when she writes about Piazza San Lorenzo. The mix of history, local knowledge, architectural notes & personal-life details make for a winning mixture & an easy read. And she knows her gelato too. All in alll an attractive, characterful & thoughtful introduction (or refresher) for Florence fans of alll levels.
