A lost church and the Botanical Garden in Florence
What do you do when you’ve already been to a place several times and you’ve got some time to kill? Recently I found myself again in Florence because of work and I had no idea what to do with a couple of hours of free time. I had lunch and absolutely no plans for my free afternoon. So I just kept walking when I left the restaurant. I wasn’t really walking in the unknown direction because I have actually walked down that street previously but after a couple of turns I saw something new in the distance. A grey tower. I came closer and saw that it was the oldest Anglican church in Florence. How funny that I manage to find English things wherever I go. 🙂
But I didn’t remember the name of the church and when I tried to find it on Google for the purpose of this post I couldn’t. There wasn’t such church on the map and when I googled Anglican church in Florence the search engine gave me a different result. After quite a bit of the research I found my mystery church. It is the Holy Trinity church which was acquired by the Waldesians in 1967. It was the first Anglican church in Florence built in the first half of the nineteenth century by Domenico Giraldi. Only fifty years later the English expat community of Florence decided to rebuilt the church in an English perpendicular style to designs by George Frederick Bodley. There are statues of St John the Baptist, King David, St Alban, St Augustine, St Stephen, St George, St Andrew and St Patrick on the grey church tower. The main English church today is St Mark’s English Church.
After admiring the marble statues of the saints on the church tower I crossed the street and saw a park and thought that I might sit there for a while and enjoy the sunshine. But this park wasn’t actually an ordinary park; it was the Botanical garden of Florence and so I decided to visit it. The entry cost me only 3 euros. I walked around the botanical garden, sat and soaked up the sun and then explored some more. In the end I decided to take some photos with my phone and maybe write a few words about it for my travel blog :).
