Firenze: Not just the name of a centaur in Harry Potter

I went to Florence (which in italiano is Firenze) yesterday!  I hopped on an autobus on Post and it brought me there, with a stop at an American veterans' cimetero for a Veterans' Day ceremony.  The graves there were arranged in concave rows, which produced an interesting visual effect:

There was a partially-mosaic mappa showing where in Italy the soldiers in the cemetery died:

More cimetero foto:

After that we moved on to Florence.

Now, I've already been to the important musei (museums) in Florence, so I didn't visit any musei yesterday.  But I DID visit due mercati (two markets).  The thing to buy in Florence is cuoio/pelle (leather), although scarpe (scarves) and cravatte (ties) are big, too.  Here are some foto dei mercati:

I finally bought a portafoglio (wallet).  Here it is:

I crossed the Ponte Vecchio (that means "Old Bridge"), which traverses the fiume Arno and is covered in botteghe di gioielli (jewelry shops).  Some gioielli:

On the other side of the ponte I saw this fontana (fountain)...

...and this faccia:

Here is the vista from the Ponte Vecchio:

Here is a vista of the Ponte Vecchio from another ponte:

I took some foto of Palazzo Vecchio ("Old Palace") because I knew certain people in my audience appreciate that it was an architectural influence on City Hall in Worcester:

Right before I left, I visited the Duomo, or La Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, which is a massive cattedrale with an astonishingly huge dome (cupola) on it.  It is impossible to get it all in one foto, but here are some tiny models of it:

The Battistero di San Giovanni (St. John's Baptistery), which is famous for its fancy doors, is right next door:

And of course there is a giant campanile (bell tower) to go with the basilica:

More foto of the exterior of the Duomo:

Then I went in.  The inside is not nearly as ornate as you might expect from seeing the outside (the photos are dark because I didn't want to use my flash in there):

I paid otto (eight) Euro to go to the top.  To get there, I had to go up 413 (I think) increasingly narrow and increasingly steep stairs that were sometimes spiral and sometimes not.  Here are some of the stairs:

Halfway up I found these giant popes glaring at me:

There were some tiny finestre (windows).  Out of one them you could see this David (there are lots of them in Florence):

Eventually I popped out just below the ceiling of the cupola:

Then I had to climb stairs between the ceiling and outside of the dome.  The walls curved like so:

There was complicated brickwork:

This thing on top of the dome is called a lantern:

Here are some viste from the top.  See if you can find the cupola's massive shadow:

After that, I climbed down.  The way down popped out just below the dome before going to the floor.  Here is some of the crazy dome art:

See the weeny little people below:

Here are more foto di Firenze: