Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the crowds and admire the Baptistery’s east doors by Ghiberti — the Gates of Paradise, as Michel-angelo called them.
No longer. As I stared at the 13th-century mosaics in the apse and Donatello and Michelozzo’s tomb of Antipope John XXIII, a group of bored Italian teenagers started hugging each other and gossiping on the front pew next to me.
It was the same all over town. In the Piazza della Signoria, tourists flocked round the copy of Michelangelo’s David at 8 a.m. Next door, they were queuing to see the Botticellis at the Uffizi before the gallery opened at 8.15. And this was in early spring, long before the mass tourism of summer.
Unless you can fork out a fortune for a private tour of the greatest hits of Florence — or Rome, London or New York — that’s it.
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