Home     About Us     Contact Us     Site Map     Mexico 1953     Personal West     Cold Stone     In My Dream     Other Projects      
FLORENCE - WARM STONE - 2005
Fifty years after "Cold Stone"

It is a city that lives off visitors, nearly as much as Venice, and wealthy retired people of taste, but at least some Italians who work can afford to live in it, or at least near it. I met an American lawyer with a lovely home in a hilly suburb, Settignano, that looked downhill over Bernard Berenson's "I Tatti" residence. He had married an Italian woman, an art historian (one almost says "of course") who inherited the home. He made a good living securing divorces for American women who marry dashing Italians and then find that their mother-in-law has all the power in her household. Sometimes that works out, though. A young San Franciscan I know helps her Florentine husband run his two outdoor market stalls beside the central market and gets great help with her child from her mother-in-law. But the closest they can afford to live is 45 minutes out of town.

Firenze
Pause Stop Previous Next View full-sized photos