Part of the hotel is partly in an old medieval church and a Byzantine tower dating from the 6th century. This tower, the Pagliazza tower, is also the oldest building in the city.
Back in my stay at the Brunelleschi hotel.
Located in the heart of Florence's old town.
Hotel Brunelleschi is located in the oldest district of Florence. Located between Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Signoria, staying at this charming hotel in Florence, you will stay in the historic heart of the city.
The most famous places of Florence are a 5 minute walk away. Difficult to find a better place to discover Florence on foot ...
The entrance to the hotel is in Piazza Santa Elisabetta and it is here that you can see the Pagliazza tower, the oldest building still standing in Florence!
That was where he’d known this white before—there in the crib, all newness and wonder in waking and rest. And there the voice had spoken to him out of the white, the same voice that spoke to him now, with the same questions, the same answers: “So what do you think?” “Of what?” Josh asked, simultaneously petulant and passive. “Of all this?” At just that moment the white parted and complete blackness ensued; then, in an instant in a place that knew no time, the universe was created in a tiny brilliant flash far away in the blackness and then unfolded its full cosmological history in a dazzling parade of spinning galaxies, gooey nebulae, nascent stars, coalescing solar systems, plodding planets, comets streaking, all beginnings, all endings—the fullness of time compressed into an instant, the massiveness of the universe constrained to a flash, all in a word: this. “Gift,” Josh said, then and now. “Love,” the voice said. “Is there a difference?” The white returned, though without the descent. Sleep ensued, then and now. Day Six Laura sat beside Josh.
The clock on the nightstand read 2:12—that would be AM: clear cold night outside the window, the quarter-moon’s silver glow hinting at the late frost’s steady approach. Inside, the room was generously warm. Sherri’d recommended turning up the thermostat to help warm Josh as his metabolism had slowed dramatically and his blood pressure was very low. In this seemingly casual suggestion, Laura had noted in Sherri the shadow of deeper concern—her words too carefully chosen, the skin around her eyes tightening into the briefest of winces. The patient for his part seemed to be resting comfortably, on his back with the covers tight to his chin, his hands and arms outside the covers at his side. They’d honored his request and not reconnected the sensors.
The monitor and its stand had been rolled off to a corner of the room and stood there in the dim light like a one-eyed judge surveying the proceedings. Without the anchoring tethers of the sensors’ leads, Josh’s body appeared marooned on the bed’s island—lost at sea and utterly alone. Which of course he was, Laura thought—totally alone from here on out. Whatever her caring ministrations—her words and love and actions, even her warm body pushed up against his cooler parts (a gift she’d not venture tonight, out of respect for him, the others in the house, and most especially herself)—the balance of Josh’s journey was requisitely solitary, at least in regards to worldly companions or supplies. Laura thought about that long-ago Chinese emperor with his thousands of terracotta soldiers to accompany him in his final walk, the Egyptian pharaohs with their servants and pets and abundant provisions—all just as alone as Josh now: no marathoner’s training for this, no trumpet’s call of reinforcements, no siren’s wail of civil preparedness. But what about her preparedness—to witness, to say good-bye (after only so recently saying hello for the first time in decades).
Well, no prohibition on supplies for her. She had this comfortable chair, this nightstand’s light, this can of diet cola (the fullcaffeine kind, with plenty more in the fridge). She’d stay awake this whole night—least she could do: for Devon, for herself, even if it mattered naught for the lone-travelling Josh. Laura took a long swallow from the can, set it carefully on the pottery coaster on the nightstand, took up her pen and pad, and began to write. It was the day after we first had sex. I wish I could use the euphemism “made love” to refer to that auspicious event, but there was no love there in the back of your mom’s car in that awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes painful groping then probing then sweaty panting release by you into my undefended vagina—well, let’s call it what it was: my unprotected, pristinely vulnerable womb (a flagrant risk we both were aware of before we started, as we commenced, while we continued, and when you climaxed, and in the heart-slowing seconds after you finished that turned into a heart-stopping anxious wait through the ensuing minutes, hours, days, and weeks till the onset of my long-delayed period—no doubt delayed by the probing of your penis and the stress of our wait—finally granted us a reprieve).
But the day after that forgettable unforgettable event, in the full-blown gale of the chance we’d taken and its potential consequences (pregnant at sixteen!) and in the midst of a late fall blizzard, you decided to go hunting and left me alone in your bedroom in your family’s empty house (all other occupants off doing chores of one sort or another) to stew in the juices of my full-boiling fears. And I was far into those fears, weighing the challenges of getting an abortion without my parents’ knowledge against the challenges of carrying a baby while keeping up with my homework, when I heard the pop-pop of two gunshots through the muffling effects of the storm and the thick walls of the house. I went to the window that overlooked the side yard that led to the fields that led to the swamp that led to the river. The snow had slackened some and I could just make out the river flowing slate gray in the approaching dusk. In the middle distance, where the clean mowed hayfields now a flat sheet of six inches of luminous snow merged into the marsh-grass hummocks of the swamp, I could barely see a lone figure standing still amidst the storm. Your shotgun, which had surely been the source of those two quick shots, was again on your shoulder. In the whole panorama, nothing was moving except the swirling snow and the barely perceptible southward flow of the river.
My eyes locked on your figure and waited for you to move. The seconds stretched into minutes and still you didn’t budge. I began to wonder if you were an apparition borne of the storm and my stress, or maybe a sapling that had grown up on that spot since I’d last had cause to look, a sapling that my eyes and heart had made into you out of need and hope. Then finally you moved, so slowly and deliberately that I wondered if it was my mind making you move, desiring you to move.
But no—it was real movement, amidst the snow and the gathering dark. I could see you raise one leg slowly, set it on a hummock, then raise the other leg and step carefully to the next. And in that moment I began to sense everything you sensed—your deliberate strides carefully from one hummock to the next, not wanting to fall into the dark uncertain water and muck between those dry mounds; the gun on your shoulder, the barrels damp with melting snow; the near-numb fingers of your right hand gripping the slick cold wood of the gun’s stock, brushing the frozen trigger guard. I felt you sigh at the discovery of the dead pheasant in the shallow water between two clumps of grass, felt you take a deep breath as you bent and grabbed the bird, its flesh still warm beneath damp cold feathers, and placed it in your game pouch. When I stepped back from the window, your room was startlingly dark.
But I didn’t turn on the light, didn’t need to or want to. I sat down on your bed in the heaviness of the early dark and knew just then the lightness— both brilliance and freedom from weight—of true love. Whatever had happened or did happen inside my womb—embryo lodged or egg flushed away—we would find a way onward and together. I didn’t think of it then in so many words. In fact I’ve never put words to the moment at all till just now, and in so doing wonder if mere words— these or others—could come close to capturing that moment’s full import or ramifications.
I mean, how can one ever capture the flash of the creation of permanent love? Permanent despite lengthy separation and estrangement—indeed, permanent because it outlasted such gaps and wanderings and mistakes and absences, with one more separation to come. Oh Josh, my Josh, emerge again from the gray shadows at any time of your choosing or Heaven’s choosing or God’s, come home to me with the double pop of gunshots or lonely trumpet’s mourn in the distance or the whisper of flake fall through dimming day, but come home to me! Don’t leave me to the ravages of aloneness or the enticing fallacy of selfsufficiency. Don’t ever leave me again. How could we have drifted so far apart then? How can we be ripped apart now? The answer both times—we weren’t, we aren’t, we won’t be. I pray. Laura set her pen down and closed the pad. She looked across Josh to the window beyond.
The moon had set and taken with it the night’s silver glow. Yawning voracious dark poured into the room, trailed by the twinkle of stars, even that light already dead— millions of years gone. She leaned back in the chair and exhaled slowly, understanding for the first time the full embracing peace of resignation. The eastern horizon offered forth the first tentative glimmer of the dawn to come as Angie turned the rental car into the gravel drive. She’d been out ahead of that dawn all night long, leaving Baghdad after dark (though who would’ve known in the glare of that military facility’s artificial day) and flying across the dark invisible Mediterranean and darker still Atlantic to land at another island of artificial light amidst the darkened former sea of the North Carolina coastal plain. In the gradual curving rise of the drive, she noted the lower limbs of the trees extending like skeletal arms into the reach of the headlights. The sight of those branches slightly unsettled her, and she realized it’d been months since she’d last seen trees so close at hand. “What other surprises does this long night hold?” she whispered aloud as she let the car roll to a stop behind the other cars parked in the drive. She well recognized the dark silhouette of the house etched against the slightly textured dark of the trees behind. This was her clearest and most intimate memory of the outside of the house, a memory stored on her return from a late-night high school party, out past her curfew and dropped off at the end of the drive by a half-drunk senior boy. She’d stood outside the house then, studying its every dim line in the dark, wondering if her parents were up, wondering how heavily they’d punish her for the tardiness.
The same two lights were on then as now—the one, clearly visible, in the kitchen over the sink; and a fainter glow leaking down the hallway and into the living room from a light in her parents’ bedroom. Her parents had let her off easy that time. Her dad was the only one awake, reading in bed; and as she’d tried to slip past their doorway undetected, he’d said softly but firmly, “Call next time.” She’d paused long enough in her skulking entrance to whisper back, “I promise,” before continuing to her room. It was only later, lying in her bed, that she wondered if her dad had heard her vow, wondered if she should go back and apologize directly for her tardiness and assure him that it would never happen again. But she hadn’t done so, had eventually drifted off to sleep. And she was never late again, at least not to his curfew, as it was less than two months later that they parted forever. Well, till now.
The Brunelleschi hotel and its rooms with views of the Duomo
As the hotel is located in the oldest part of Florence, it is very far from the standard and uniform hotels. In the hundred small rooms of the Brunelleschi hotel, there are many different rooms and suites. This is one of the charms of the hotel ...Some rooms overlook the Duomo, a true symbol of Florence. Having a view of the Duomo from your hotel is quite pleasant. You have to admit it!
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