Firenze Noir

Florence, late at night. The living, ecstatic air of daytime, humming with thunder and lightning and wind, had given up by nightfall, surrendering its energy in sheets of rain until even that had been exhausted and all that remained was coolness and quiet and shadows.

Sure, all was quiet now, as we headed back to our hotel, but earlier in the evening it had been a different story.

Picture four figures, huddled closely, darting through the streets like rats in a panic. It was us, caught without umbrellas in a rainstorm of baroque extravagance. We spied a restaurant down a small alleyway, its windows shimmering with steam and its large, black awning releasing cascades of water directly into the path of the front door. We slipped inside, looking for warmth, something to eat, and a glass of wine.

Porcini were in season, as was wild boar. So we ate them, or sauces made with them, served over sensuous heaps of silky pasta.

Wild boar, cinghiale in Italian, is rich, a bit gamey, a bit porky, and every bit delicious. Fresh porcini mushrooms? Good. Real good. But more about that later. Let's get back to Florence after dark.

It is an old, lovely city, with more history than one can comprehend. Like the lines on an aging beauty's face, its buildings, streets and alleyways tell stories of love, loss, delight and pain.

Wandering through the darkness, you quickly learn that lots of those stories also involve violence, murder, plague and mayhem.

Sculpture awaits you around every corner. You see them in the daytime, you read the plaques, you learn the history and who the sculptor was. You say to yourself, "Oh, how nice." At night, though, the sculptures' shadows speak, filling in the sordid details so that you learn the real stories. It might be as grand as the struggle between good and evil, life and death, god and man. It might just be two rivals fighting over a woman. Regardless, you won't know the whole story until you hear it from the shadows.

At night, everything is different. The Duomo, birthplace of the Renaissance, with its glorious dome, from the top of which one can see all of Tuscany in the daytime, changes as the sun goes down. Add in the rain and it becomes a spectral vision, the bones of 100,000 saints, rising up to take back the city that suckled them in their youth and cradled them in their death. It is heartbreaking, breathtaking, terrifying and gratifying all at the same time, and your eyes water as the image sears itself into your brain.

But as I mentioned before, the rain eventually died out, as did the ecstasy induced by our first night back in Florence. The Ponte Vecchio, clanging, throng-choked passage of gold shops and tourists in the daytime, became as quiet as a painting, reflecting its soft golden light off the Arno just like it has every night for centuries. In moments like these, a feeling of peace overcomes you and you long for the comforts of bed. You want to know what it is like to sleep in such a place, if only to see if it is matched in your dreams.

This is how I will always think of Florence. Always after dark.