Gay Ol' Nights in Florence

I was bursting with excitement as I sank into my vast leather armchair of a seat on the 12.50 Eurostar (no relation) to Firenze Santa Maria Novella. On my first (and to date, only) visit to Florence, with the family in 2007, I'd seen pretty much all of the city's star sights thanks to my sister's expert organisation and so on this visit I was looking forward seeing 'the rest', and to being at liberty to do so at my own pace and not, as had been the case last time, with mum in tow (love her as I deeply do, seeing Florence in intense June heat with a short-legged 70-year-old is not necessarily an experience I would recommend). Coffee in hand, I got stuck into A Room With A View, the first half of which is set in Florence, and in just an hour and three quarters and seven chapters, I arrived.

I took a cab from the station and a few minutes later was dropped outside the Pension Orchidea, a Rough Guide recommendation I'd booked before leaving Rome. I couldn't have wished for more Forster-esque location: the Orchidea occupies the first floor of a twelfth century palazzo in a cobbled street just behind the Duomo, Florence's immense, breath-taking, technicolor cathedral. The rooms are basic but perfectly fine for a short stay, and the Italian-American owners have done wonders at making the place homely - when I found that there was English Breakfast tea included in the selection of help-yourself-anytime drinks in the lounge area, I practically wept with joy. Best of all though was the location, right in the centre of the city within easy walking distance of just about everywhere, and so I set out on foot for my first destination.

Now, while Florence's top three attractions are undoubtedly the Duomo, the Uffizi gallery and Michelangelo's David, for a fashion and footwear junkie such as I the fourth has to be the Salvatore Ferragamo Shoe Museum. I'd not been able to persuade the family to go last year - funnily enough, they were more interested in seeing Botticelli's Birth of Venus than Eva Peron's slingbacks, the Philistines - so on this visit it was right at the top of my itinerary. Tucked away in the basement of the Ferragamo flagship store and company headquarters on the heavenly shopping stretch that is via Tornabuoni, the museum (€5 admission and worth every cent) is a compact but fascinating collection of sketches, photographs, lasts and of course shoes, spanning the eighty-odd years history of this (sadly deceased) shoemaker to the stars. Here the hand-whittled lasts of the shoes of Hepburns Audrey and Katherine; there original artwork from Ferragamo's iconic Art Deco-style ad campaigns; here photos of Sal himself ministering to the tootsies of Marlene Dietrich; there, Judy Garland's very own, sky-high rainbow wedges in a glass case. After about an hour of pure camp cobblers, I sashayed out onto the street and into the boutique thinking I might invest in a slice of Ferragamo glamour all of my own, but compared with Marilyn Monroe's original red rhinestone-encrusted stilettos, the conservative if beautifully crafted men's collection could only be an anti-climax.

Taking a left onto Lungarno Corsini (factoid: the embankment streets are all called Lungarno something-or-other from lung'arno, literally 'Along the Arno', the river which bisects the city), I strolled down to the Ponte Vecchio, the only one of Florence's bridges to survive the Nazis' bombings when they retreated from the city in 1944. It's a remarkable structure, with its higgledy-piggledy piles of shops and alleyways, famed now for its myriad jewellery shops all seemingly peddling the same eye-wateringly sparkly and buttock-clenchingly expensive gew-gaws which everyone comes to gawp at but never, it seems, to buy. I did, with a long-term view to perhaps popping the question to a certain young man, actually pop in to look at a very nice platinum and diamond ring, but when told that it was a replica of the rings designed by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston for their ultimately doomed marriage my interest quickly waned. From there I ambled back to the hotel via the Piazza della Signoria, half-ignoring the statuary for which it's best known to instead make a bee-line for the plaque marking the spot of the Bonfire of the Vanities, so brilliantly and evocatively described in Sarah Dunant's novel The Birth of Venus which I'd recommend to anyone who's been to, or might like to visit, Florence.

After a couple of quiet hours spent reading my Forster and enjoying some Japanese nibbles and beers from the Asian grocers I'd been delighted to chance upon on via S.Egidio, I headed out for some supper at Trattoria da Benvenuto (it translates, sweetly, to something like 'The Welcome Inn') where I enjoyed juicy marinated sardines followed by roast rabbit and veggies, washed down with the house red which, at €2 for 250ml, was a bargain in a city where it's perfectly possible to eat extremely well, and likewise reasonably cheaply, but very rarely the twain in one place. (A footnote here about restaurants; I had hoped to re-visit the wonderful Coquinarius on via dell'Oche where as a family we'd enjoyed a couple of superb meals last year (their pappardelle with rabbit ragu is worth a visit in its own right), but alas like so many small businesses it was closed for most of August and scheduled to re-open, frustratingly, two days after I was due to leave!) Replete, I thought I'd check out the scene, but a quick flit to three of the bars on the list found them all pretty much empty (in one I was in fact the only punter, even at 11.30) so I called it a night, moseyed back to the Orchidea and snuggled under the covers with Edward Morgan.

Next morning I was up early and, wanting to live out Chapter 2 of A Room With A View, 'In Santa Croce with no Baedeker', headed to the church of Sta. Croce where Miss Honeychurch has her memorable encounter with the Emersons. Whilst externally the church is almost as elaborately beautiful as the Duomo, Forster's description of the interior - "But how like a barn!" - proved highly accurate, the high beamed ceiling and sparse decoration indeed resembling a farm building, but I was nonetheless quietly wowed by Michelangelo's tomb and the Giotto frescoes so highly praised by Forster's Mr Eager and berated by old Mr Emerson. I moved on to the Bargello museum, home (ostensibly) to much of Italy's finest sculpture as well as collections of bronzes, pottery and miniatures but usually overlooked by most visitors in favour of the city's other show-stoppers. While there are some beautiful works in the collection - I especially liked Giambologna's statues, and particularly his Ocean - a couple of things niggled. Firstly, the published entry fee, like at the Colosseum in Rome and as would prove to be the case elsewhere in Florence and beyond, was bumped up a few euros by a non-discretionary extra charge for a 'special exhibition', which in this case proved to be some bronzes and statues which whilst admittedly impressive, were almost entirely taken from the museum's permanent collection. Secondly, one of the museum's main draws, Donatello's androgynous bronze David, was being restored and consequently face-down in a special frame in the room it usually occupies, and while I know conservation is part and parcel of a museum's role, there are plenty of places in Florence where I could see a gorgeous young man's firm behind without it costing me €7. Finally, the Bargello's famous Michelangelo room, which on paper has one of the most comprehensive collections of his work throughout his life, was remarkable on my visit less for what it contained than for what it didn't; many plinths were empty due to the works being either on loan, under restoration or indeed in the 'special exhibition' across the hall. Had any of this been pre-advised at the entrance I might have though twice about visiting, but on balance it was a worthwhile experience and one I'd recommend.

Continuing the Forster trail, I took a stroll through town to Lungarno della Grazie where, at number 2, Forster located the Pension Bertolini and, within, the room with (or more specifically, without) a view of the book's title. While these days the building is a smart private hotel rather than the simple pension run by a Cockney where Forster himself stayed with his mother, it was still great fun to see the building and idly speculate, looking up, as to which of the windows looking out onto the Arno and beyond might, had fiction been truth, have belonged to the room occupied by Lucy and Miss Bartlett. After lunch at a large, noisy but reasonably priced brasserie, I crossed the river to the district known as Oltr'arno - what we might call in English 'T'other side of the Arno' - to visit Florence's second biggest gallery after the Uffizi, the Palazzo Pitti. This was a revelation. Every single ornate, gilded room in this spectacularly well-preserved palace yielded something noteworthy, from masterpiece after masterpiece by Titian, Rubens and Raphael to sculptures by Canova, and from the sumptuous draped and flocked interiors of the royal apartments to the odd, and oddly fascinating sight of Napoleon's bathtub. While the Gallery of Modern Art, housed somewhat incongruously in the same building, contained very little of interest, the main floors more than made up for this and I was so fascinated that I was more than happy to kill time, waiting for the spectacular lightning storm which had blown up outside to subside, by going round the entire collection twice.

That night, after having given into temptation and just this once foregone fine Italian cuisine for a McDonald's (which I at least ordered in Italian, if that counts) I decided to give the scene another try - it was Friday, after all - and was greatly pleased to find that Thursday night's near-total desertion had been an exception and that Florence's gay community was alive, well and drinking. Starting off with a couple of beers at the trendy, friendly café-bar Piccolo (busier outside in the smoking area than the smoke-free inside: welcome to Italy!) I moved onto the creatively-monikered Y.A.G. Bar which was pleasingly packed and noisy, with a big video screen showing mostly British and American pop acts allowing me to have the unbridled joy of throwing shapes to Girls Aloud and Whitney Houston while the Florentines watched aghast. Unable to find putatively the scene's most popular club, Tabasco, the tiny street given as its address not appearing on any of the maps in my possession, I rounded off the night with a quick visit to the dark 'n' dirrrty Crisco, a men-only joint very typical of the late night gay scene on the Continent complete with 'Ring Bell For Entry' sign, a peephole for the doorman to size you up through, a nose-bleed techno soundtrack and very, very old, grainy porn (had there been sound I would have expected 1920's clipped vowels and the odd "What-ho Albert! Steady on as you penetrate old chap!") showing on a big screen. There, I was befriended by a group of Italian lads who taught me some choice Italian phrases in return for my help with English profanities, but I turned down the invitation from one of them to put words into action and instead heeded Miss Bartlett's advice to Lucy on their last night in Florence, to "Go to bed at once dear. You need all the rest you can get."

In the morning I left for Milan.