Florence Panorama from Piazzale Michelangelo, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Florence Panorama from Piazzale Michelangelo, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Florence Panorama from Piazzale Michelangelo, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-032162

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Every serious postwar tourist who made it to Florence climbed to Piazzale Michelangelo and pointed a camera at this view, because the Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio arranged themselves across the Arno skyline in exactly the way that said, without argument, that you had been to Florence and paid attention. The American and northern-European grand tour had been interrupted by a decade of unpleasantness and was now resuming with considerable enthusiasm, fuelled by strengthening currencies, affordable film, and the widespread belief that colour slides shown on a screen in the living room constituted a social event. The slide itself has suffered — emulsion damage ghosting through the upper sky in pale bruised blotches — which is the reliable fate of colour film left in a drawer for seven decades, and which the original owner, clicking the carousel forward for guests, never had to worry about. Brunelleschi's dome has anchored this skyline since 1436 and will continue to do so regardless of what happens to any particular tourist's slide collection.

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