descriptions of Italy - of its warmth and opulence, of its cool porticos and silver fountains. You can read elsewhere about the sound of a lyre on a moonlit velvet night, and of beautiful men and women locked in the dramatic dance of love. Everything I know about Italy, and Florence in particular, I have told to Will Shakespeare. Read his plays and you will see what I mean. I have met Duke Orsini from Twelfth Night and been introduced to two gentlemen of Verona. I witnessed the tragedy of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Oh, yes, I don't lie! I've met Portia, but she was not like the Portia you meet in The Merchant of Venice, black-haired and golden-hearted. The one I met years later was golden-haired and black-hearted. And the Jew Shylock was one of the most generous-hearted men I have ever met. I was angry with Will when I saw how he had described him. I respect the Jews -they are like the Irish, full of black humour without a grain of pomposity.
Ah, Florence, home of Donatello, Fra Angelico, Giotto and Machiavelli! I suppose that's it in one sentence. Florence is a city of contrasts: on the one hand, love, wine and roses; on the other, a world of intrigue - the secret police known as the Eight, the stiletto in the dark, the garrotte string around the throat. It is a city of churches, convents, priories and monastries, but its real God is commerce.
As we approached one of the main gates, little Maria, looking pert as a pie on the small donkey Lord Roderigo had hired, described the city's recent history under the great ascetic and fiery monk Savonarola. He took over the government of the city after the expulsion of the de' Medici and tried to turn it into a saintly republic. He organized processions: five thousand girls and boys clad in white, wearing crowns of olive leaves and carrying branches and following a tabernacle on which was painted Our Lord riding into Jerusalem. All amusements were banned. The banks were emptied, the money handed over for good works. Women gave up their finery, smashed their cosmetic jars and walked through the streets reading the service of the Mass. Taverns closed at six o'clock. On saints' days shops were shut and whores were banned. Blasphemers had their tongues pierced, fornicators and sodomites went to the stake.
'I wouldn't have survived there long!' I interrupted.
Maria just grinned. She described Savonarola's police -children aged between ten and eleven, who carried crucifixes and stormed private houses confiscating harps and flutes, boxes of perfumes and books of secular poetry.
'Then,' Maria continued chirpily, 'Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola. His monastery at San Marco was stormed, Savonarola and two companions were condemned and hanged, their bodies burnt as black as rats in the public square.' Maria shook her head. 'Then Florence swung to the other extreme. Worn-out horses were released in the. cathedral, filth burnt in place of incense, horse-dung heaped into pulpits, ink poured into holy-water stoups and the Crown of the Virgin put on the head of a courtesan.' Maria smiled up at me, innocent as an angel; never once had she even acknowledged the conversation in the boxwood garden at Eltham. 'So, this is Florence; be careful, Master Shallot, be most prudent how you go!'
Of course I ignored her. I found Florence fascinating. We entered the city, crossed the Rubaconte bridge and walked along the streets, which are fairly wide and nearly all paved with flag-stones. On each side is a footpath supplied with a gutter to carry rainwater down to the Arno. The streets are dry and clear of mud and slime in winter, though in summer, as on the day we entered, the paving stones catch the heat and turn the city into a cauldron. We passed Brunelleschi's cathedral with its classical dome and continued across the city.
The din and the clack of tongues was incredible as people of various professions plied their trade - whores resplendent in yellow robes, greengrocers with their moveable booths, butchers behind their open stalls. On each angle of the crowded piazzas or squares stood a church. Barbers shaved people in the open and the din was worse than in London. We went down the Mercato Nuovo where, under the awnings of their shops and booths, the dealers in silk and other textiles plied their trade. Beside them, grave-faced money-changers sat at their desks.
Florence has many open squares and spaces and it seems that the Florentines, certainly in summer, live life in the open. Maria explained that in the early afternoon they Have a siesta and everyone, except the poor, takes refuge on the first floor in a cool room with glass windows and curtains to hide them from the heat. The houses are very spacious, even those of the burgesses. I glimpsed terraces, courtyards, stables, passages, antechambers, fountains and wells which provide fresh water. One thing I did notice is how the Florentines love a good story. On the Piazza San Marco, a crowd of couriers, tanners, porters, donkeymen, dyers, second-hand clothes dealers, armourers and blacksmiths gathered round a little platform on which a fable-singer was recounting a story. So avid is the audience, Maria explained, that the chanteur never finishes his story in one day. He makes a collection in his cap and tells the people to return at the same hour the following day. I was astonished - in London the poor bugger would have been pelted with horse-dung and held hostage until he told the story from beginning to end.