Cavalcade

Monday, January 6, 2014
Well, my friends are alll gone and I really miss them.   However, more will be coming tonight.
Wee bit of bad news:   I caught a cold (if that's bad news I'm happy to be the bearer.
I just want to share with you the unique ceremony that Florence puts for the 6th of January, our King's Day celebration.   They call it Cavalcata Die Magi... ahd this is how it goes:
At 2:00 pm, everybody gathers at the Pitti Piazza and the procesion departs with characters dressed in Renaissance clothes.   I am pretty sure the costumes are NOT authentic, but they are spectacular.  The procession must have been 100 sections long.   It lasted over 1.5 hours (my feet were killing me!) and there were thousands of people lining the huge plaza and all the streets the procession walked through:
Pitti's Square, Guicciardini's Street, Loggia della Signoria, Calzaiuoli's Street, until you get to the Piazza Duomo, huge piazza, where the cathedral is.  At 3:30 the break out this colubrina, or small cannon and they do a "blank" detonation.  At thagt time, the Cardinal of the Duoumo delivers the Epiphany stockings to the children of Florence's churches.   They must have had 2,000 stockings.
As we well know, in many countries, this is the day when children really get their presents.   It was lovely, lovely, and the day was sunny and you could appreciate all the colors and everthing.

I am going to put some pictures here and then do a caption, because I have to go someplace right now. I am going on a tour of the Grand Vasari Corridor which is the authentic medieval corridor that connected the Medici Palace with the Pitti Palace.  The corridor was meant to let those VIPs come and go unnoticed by us mere mortals and apparently the scene was quite fantastic.   At the corridor, they also have a fabulous exhibit of self-portraits of many of the most important Florentine and Italian painters which has never been shown.  So, I am getting my dose of culture today.

Here are some pictures:

These are two of Italy's finest mounted police.  They began the cavalcade.

First come the horses.

I won't bore you with descriptions.   Enjoy!

Every "society" had its own banner.

Theis would have been more rural manner of dressing. 

Same here, not for formal occasions.

Regal

Lots and lots of drummers

So elegant!

Peppermint, anyone?

Wanna dance?

Where are our husbands?

Maybe these two are the husbands.

Proud to carry their flag.

I told you there were lots of drums.

See above....

These were really cool, they kept waving them.

Beautiful people

Best dressed I

Best dressed II

Another very cool group...   keep looking.

They had a very interesting coreography.

They would throw them up in the air, and catch them.  Is this
what you call medieval majorettes?

Best dressed III

He's competing with Pope Frances for Best Dressed Man.

See how all the people are lined up?

The Grim Ripper?

This is the basket with the offerings/presents.

You can see the front of the Pitti Palace in the backgrtound.

Best dressed couple

Loved the red and white.   All of these groups have DIFFERENT
colors and patterns.

It wasn't snowing, but that's how the picture came out.
Don't ask me how!!!

More banner coreography

The beautiful Florentine people.... definitely upper crust.

Those two boys were so cute.

They were definitely not cold.

This is the beginning of the Red Hat Society.....

The Medieval Darth Vader?

Can you handle TWO of them?

Same as above

Those are definitely YOUR colors!

The material for all the costumes was very elaborate.

Notice the masks....   

I don't know how they do it, but ALL the men had the same shoes,
except in different colors.

Notice the stockings

I think this was my favorite man's costume.

The medieval trend of color matching and combining

This  was my favorite for the ladies' costumes.    Because it's RED!

Quite a number of horses.

They have falcons on their arms.

Beautiful horse

See above

Gorgeous!   Horse or the guy?   You tell me!

So, as you can see, it was a very colorful, very celebratory event.   I wasn't close enough to the area where they were giving the children the stockings, so I didn't take any pictures.   It was about 8-10 people deep and I'm only 5'3"!

Tomorrow, Tuesday, I am going to the Uffizi Palace to get a tour of the artwork and THEN, (for a fee, of course) the very famous VASARI CORRIDOR will be opened and we are going to be able to cross it.   This is the famous bridge where the Medicis and the Pittis could go to each other's palaces without being noticed.
I will tell you all about it.  Ciao!