A Gallerist in Florence: Wine Windows, Gelato and the Art of Everyday Life
After days of Michelangelo and Botticelli, it's easy to forget that Florence is also simply a city where people live, shop and eat. Some of my favourite moments of the trip had nothing to do with museums at all.
The Busiest Street in Florence
The streets leading to the Ponte Vecchio are some of the busiest in the city: glove makers, tailors, jewellers and a river of visitors, all squeezed between tall shuttered palazzi. It's worth braving once, then slipping down a side street to find the Florence the crowds walk past.
A Window for Wine
Look closely at the walls of old Florentine palazzi and you'll spot small arched hatches, about the size of a bottle. These are buchette del vino, wine windows. From the 16th and 17th centuries onwards, wealthy families who owned vineyards sold wine directly from their cellars through these little openings. You knocked, handed over your flask, and a hand passed it back full.
They proved their worth during the plague of the 1630s, when they allowed wine to be sold without contact. Nearly four hundred years later, during COVID, several reopened for exactly the same reason. The one we found now serves gelato, which I think the original owners would have forgiven.
Vivoli, Since 1930
Behind that wine window is Vivoli, one of Florence's oldest gelato makers, trading since 1930. Its pink neon sign and old green shopfront feel like a film set, but this is the real thing: a family business that has outlasted almost everything around it.
We ordered an affogato: gelato "drowned" in hot espresso, finished here with a rim of crushed pistachio. It's simple, perfectly balanced, and gone in minutes.
The Art of Everyday Life
What struck me about these little discoveries is how much care goes into them. A stone hatch cut precisely to fit a flask. A neon sign hand-bent into a signature. A coffee topped with pistachio as carefully as a painter finishes a canvas. Florence treats everyday things as worth doing beautifully, and that's a lesson that belongs on every wall, not just in museums.
More from Florence soon.
Next from Florence: face to face with Michelangelo's David at the Accademia.
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