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- TRAVEL, Page 63Uncommon Glimpses of FlorenceA rubble-strewn archaeological site proves a tourist's dreamBy Cathy Booth
-
-
- Piazza della Signoria -- one of the most beautiful squares in
- the world -- is, alas, in a state of upheaval. We know that you
- will be disappointed and would like to offer you all our apologies.
-
- From a series of billboards in Italian, English, French and
- German hanging on Florence's city hall
-
- Piazza della Signoria is in a state of upheaval these days.
- The piazza that has been the center of Florentine life since before
- Medici times, the space chosen by Michelangelo for his exquisite
- statue David, has been ripped up and fenced in. The current David,
- a copy, stands forlornly in front of a partially scaffolded Palazzo
- Vecchio. Cosimo I, the young Medici ruler who sits mid-square atop
- his bronze horse, gazes down on an ugly, corrugated plastic roof
- covering a third of the square.
-
- But tourists at ground level who poke their noses through the
- chain link fencing and peer past the scaffolding and sandbags are
- rewarded with a wholly different, riveting view of the famous
- piazza: underground. There, some 30 Italian archaeologists are
- digging through a cross section of history from the Bronze Age to
- medieval times. Exposed now is a Roman thermal bath with its
- frigidarium, or cold room, almost intact. And smack on top of that
- are the remnants of a tower dating from the 13th century era of the
- Ghibellines. With 86,000 sq. ft. of past at his feet, archaeologist
- Giuliano De Marinis, director of the dig, is exultant: "Piazza
- della Signoria is a unique occasion for reading the story of
- Florence. It's the first time that anyone has dug a Roman and
- medieval town in such a big area."
-
- Tourists and Florentines alike often forget their carefully
- timed itineraries so that they can follow the progress. Dutch
- traveler David Casale could not understand why the city was so
- apologetic. "It's absolutely fascinating. I can see you might get
- upset if this was for an underground car park, but they are
- discovering something important here." Mary Rau, an American
- visitor to Florence who lives in London, curtailed time at the
- Uffizi Gallery to stare at the hole in the ground. "See the
- archways they are uncovering? And they're bringing up shards of
- pottery. They're onto something."
-
- The truth is that Florence almost did not let the
- archaeologists excavate the site. The ruins were discovered in
- 1974, but the city argued over courses of action for more than a
- decade. Finally, archaeologists won permission for a three-year
- dig, funded with some $3 million from the Ministry of Cultural
- Affairs. The deadline for completion is November 1989, when the
- city must repave the square for the onslaught of 1990 World Cup
- soccer fans. As a result, bits and pieces of Florence's past are
- visible for a month, or sometimes only weeks, then are re-covered
- with sand and pebbles to await future digs. "As archaeologists,
- once we've excavated and documented the find, our work is done,"
- said De Marinis with a sigh, "but from the public's point of view,
- covering up is the opposite of what's being done in the rest of
- Europe. The tendency is to leave it open to see." Already, a 5th
- century Christian church and a Roman fabric-dyeing plant are back
- under sand.
-
- The ongoing excavation is one of the few tourist sights in
- Italy with regular hours these days. Five days a week, fair weather
- or foul, the team is out shoveling and charting its discovery. A
- miniature Bobcat bulldozer shovels dirt around in one section,
- while in another, workers gingerly remove dust from rocks with tiny
- brushes. "Everybody stops to take a look," says De Marinis. "People
- yell all kinds of questions. Mostly they ask us what's new. But
- usually it's the foreigners; for Florentines, it's more a pain in
- the neck."
-
- No signs describe this rich, evanescent display; often the
- tourists don't know what they're looking at. A tour group of Soviet
- emigres glanced briefly at an intact medieval basement and walked
- away, thinking they had come across some urban renewal project.
- Francesco Nicosia, the feisty archaeological superintendent for
- Tuscany who battled for permission to dig up the piazza, hopes to
- mount a midyear show to explain the history unearthed: a medieval
- city of giant towers sitting atop an important Roman city dating
- from the 1st century; Greek objects imported as early as the 8th
- century B.C.; even obsidian tools and pottery fragments probably
- imported from Sardinia around 3000 B.C. Nicosia says the findings
- have forced experts to rethink old Florence: "We expected to
- discover the Roman and the medieval cities, but not to this extent.
- We also didn't know the city was so old, going as far back as the
- Bronze Age."
-
- So forget this "alas" stuff, Florence. You don't have to
- apologize. Tourists have a unique chance this year: to see the
- splendors of history dug up at their feet.