October in Florence – the Infinite Colours of Art!

Red sunsets, golden morning sun, russet and green city parks. The colours of autumn are strong and dense, like the still-warm grape must after the harvest. In this season everything stimulates the senses, and aromas and colours become more intense before giving way to the cold winter.

Let’s relax and accept Nature’s invitation to slow down and enjoy our surroundings to the full. This is the season to take a Florentine holiday in Palazzo Castri, where we are welcomed by carefully tended and fragrant rooms that are both stylish and comfortable. It is the season to take the time to enjoy the hotel’s abundant breakfasts without rushing, before walking out to enjoy the art on show in Florence. The cool air makes for an enjoyable trip to visit the various exhibitions scattered throughout the city, which are easy to reach on foot from our strategically placed “buen retiro”. Accompanied by the fresh breeze from the hills it will be like entering the historic forest, in the lanes leading us like pathways through this never-ending Renaissance.

A gust of wind and a stroke of the brush!

As you adjust your headscarf against the light breeze tousling your hair, look around you. Memorise the colours of the sky, the shadows of the clouds, the sunsets and the colour contrasts. They are the same as those you will see in the paintings and frescos by the great artists that can be seen in Florence. Moments and emotions captured in the charcoal sketches on brown paper made for engravings or drawings, which we can send you at the click of a mouse nowadays, but which would once have been transported by horse in leather satchels from workshop to workshop before being turned into works of art.

To my eyes autumn comes alive in the browns and greens of Botticelli’s paintings, the reds and golds painted by Raphael’s skilled hands, the dark spaces illuminated as if by a bolt of lightening by Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. The autumn light has often inspired these artists and others because it is intensely natural, and expresses the melancholy of the last opportunities being offered. If we take the impression of these colours with us when we visit the Uffizi Gallery, the pleasure of wandering through its rooms will be a different, more thoughtful experience. We will be more connected with and bring to life the autumnal subjects seen by the artists’ eyes. Just think of paintings like “Pantry with cask, game, meat and pottery” by Jacopo Chimenti known as Empoli or “Still life with Pumpkin” by the Dutch artist Van Aelst. 

The mystery of October and the eight rooms of the Uffizi

October, as its name suggests, is linked to the number 8, due to its position on the Roman calendar. As we know, if you lie the number 8 down, it represents two circles joined together, symbolising infinity, the unmeasurable, the reflection of the spirit within the created world.

Therefore let us allow this powerful symbol therefore to be the guiding number of our October tour of Florence and visit the eight rooms on the first floor of the east wing of the Uffizi dedicated to Caravaggio and 17^th-century painting. The rooms have imaginative names: “Between Reality and Magic”, “Caravaggio and Artemisia”, “Medusa” “Bacchus”, “By Candlelight”, “Rembrandt and Rubens”, “Galileo and the Medici” and “Florentine Epic”. To enjoy the magical art in these rooms take the time to take eight careful breaths before going inside and you will enter each room with the right level of concentration to enter the artist’s time. Your Florentine visit will be infinitely unforgettable.

A word of advice so you don’t waste any time. Use our concierge service to book your tickets before arriving in Florence. You will only queue for 8 - or even fewer - minutes to enter the Uffizi. You can’t get more magical than that!

October in Florence. Don’t wait, count to 8 and… Book!