<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@mb21" class="u-url mention">@<span>mb21</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://post.lurk.org/@th4" class="u-url mention">@<span>th4</span></a></span> Yeah, exactly this!</p>

<p>9/ Lucas writes with a relaxed but educated tone. I found a lot of his views about art compatible with mine. What you also see is how many of the &quot;stories&quot; are the same (many, of course, are from Vasari) — tour guides have been spinning the same tales I guess for centuries. ↵</p>

<p>8/ What is surprising is how much has NOT changed! Even a 100 years ago, he described Florence as crowded. He also called it a museum primarily serving tourists. It already sounds…a lot like today. The only difference is, then you had to dodge streetcars. ↵</p>

<p>7/ - Tourism was only still growing, with consquences like:</p><p>-- A lot of places were free to get into.<br />-- The Duomo was literally used by locals as a short-cut between streets!</p><p>Things that would be unimaginable today and ever again. BUT: ↵</p>

<p>6/ Two absolutely huge changes are:</p><p>- Florence had streetcars, and they went quite a way out of the historical center.</p><p>- The Ospedale degli Innocenti was still a functioning hospital for foundlings! He can&#39;t imagine it not being one, just as today we can&#39;t imagine it as one. ↵</p>

<p>5/ - Some things have moved around, but not as much as you might expect. A lot of the big changes (like moving David to the Accademia, putting replicas outside Orsanmichele) had already been done. So in that sense, the book still feels &quot;fresh&quot;. ↵</p>

<p>4/ Things that stand out from a century ago:</p><p>- Florence was full of &quot;beggars&quot;! This really describes a city with lots of poor people that seem to pester tourists. Those people have all long since been priced out, I guess. ↵</p>

<p>3/ This book is *itself* also about change! Remember those dates? WW1 happened in-between. But Italy was on the winning side, so the impacts were relatively small. (Think of how much WW2 did, and how much more it nearly did, like blowing up the Ponte Vecchio!) ↵</p>

<p>2/ Having spent several days intensively traversing Florence, however, it was very easy to read, and I could easily picture the many things he wrote about. More interestingly, it was a fun way to see what has and hasn&#39;t changed in Florence in literally a century. ↵</p>