Tuscany — Perks Of Being A Morning Person

Taken from a journal entry on October 30, 2021

Florence is made for the glow of the early morning the same way it’s made for autumn air and history books. A cast of orange light illuminates Brunelleschi’s masterpiece from the ground up, but the Duomo is her own rising sun who never sleeps, never sets. Always the foreground of this city, no matter how hard the background tries to steal her. She’s an inadvertent light show and the convergence of all vantage points: bustling city, bygone history, natural beauty, riverside relic, tree-topped Tuscan trophy. She has it all, blending each of Florence’s traits together like facets of the atmosphere that form the air we breathe. The Duomo is the city’s oxygen, best inhaled in the hours before others catch on and she has to distribute her breath.

I’ve seen the Duomo hundreds of times. In the summer of 2018, I walked past her every morning on my way to work, soaked up her shadow during lunch breaks, passed her by and through and over, again and again. Most times, her piazza is filled with visitors, but they don’t detract or cheapen her performance. The Duomo is touristy for a reason, and if anything the number of tourists forces me to look up and notice her.

But she’s at her best and brightest when the crowds lull and she stands taller than a Tuscan tree — awake and ready before and after crowds convene in her piazza, not just in the morning and in the evening, but at the dawn of her inception and at the dusk of each generation that has faded and will fade with time. Myself included. A place that precedes my history and a place that will continue long after I am gone. A place that renders me and my observations irrelevant, and isn’t that exciting?

For now, early morning meditations in her green and pink striped shadow go down like a cheap Chianti that tastes expensive, because isn’t taste contingent on context? Being with the Duomo when no one else is here shouldn’t feel this easy, shouldn’t feel this accessible, but it is, like I’ve gotten away with something I haven’t paid for, unless you count the price of patience and sleep deprivation. I’ve stargazed on her empty steps at 3 a.m., secret bakery croissant in hand. I’ve sipped 2 euro prosecco on her quiet stoop after a night out, when there’s no point in trying to sober up because her effect is intoxicating, her aura bubbling with unhurried magic. I’ve journaled on her perimeter before any cafe has opened for breakfast, and have uncovered intimacy in a place that shouldn’t be personal. 

The perks of being a morning person, I suppose. Architecture that represents so much history, that millions of people have seen over hundreds of years, feels like mine in these hours before anyone else is looking. I linger on a balcony at a budget hotel that doesn’t even offer guests towels but has a view square in line with the Duomo… if I duck under my railing and scurry to a neighboring guest’s perch. They’re asleep, so they won’t know, and in however many seconds I get, it feels like I am the only one in the entire world seeing the sight before me. I’m sure there are hundreds of people all over this city watching the sun rise, yet how can something made for the masses still feel so personalized? Overrun with collective memories and histories that converge in that perfect instant to tell me and only me their story. 

Eventually dawn will break. The sun will rise. And people will come, in only a matter of minutes. And the Duomo must share her livelihood because how is it fair to keep that to herself?