Stazione S.M.Novella in Firenze

I went to Firenze a couple of days ago with my colleagues – other Erasmus students. Everyone decided to spend one day there, but I thought that since I’m willing to visit every available spot in Italy I want to see more, especially concerning the fact that the probability of my returning to Firenze is very little I’d better stay for 2 days, so I’ve booked a hotel (with some adventures, but I managed to do that), spent a wonderful day with my new friends and when they left started exploring the city on my own.

I found Firenze to be a very special place. Full of tourists but not as overwhelmed by the opportunity to earn money from them as in Rome, but willing to share a smile and a positive vibe. Don’t get me wrong, I love Rome, but I found more people that speak English in Firenze than in my hometown, if I can say so. And the prices are way better, for food, drinks and entrance tickets to museums. As usual I have made a million of pictures, but first of all I want to share my last minutes in that awesome town.

So I am a person that panics a lot when modern technologies fail. My phone died, I had no navigation and it was almost time to go to the station and I decided since I’m using the old fashioned tourist gadget – a MAP OMG, I should start heading to the station earlier, so I did. An hour before my train. What I forgot about was that from the place where I was it takes like 10 minutes maximum to get to the final destination. Of course I came to the station too early and had a lot of time to enjoy all its magic.

I like stations, they are usually designed to be convenient and interesting at the same time. I don’t think that this last criteria is intentional, but I hope that those guys that build places like that do think of those, who’s forced to spend more than 10 minutes there, and not just trying to impress the client with some sophisticated solutions.  I like observing people at train stations, you can see a lot of different emotions on their faces, people meeting other people, saying good bye, just chilling, worrying about something, basically all stages of life happen there, it’s amusing and entertaining :)

Anyway, Firenze station!

Here’s a brief history of this place (Taken from here  and here)

Frequented by 160 thousand persons per day, 59 million per year, Firenze S. Maria Novella is a main station located right inside the city centre, in piazza della Stazione, and a primary hub in Firenze’s public transport system. It hosts over 400 trains per day and is a major intersection point for many bus and taxi lines. Firenze Santa Maria Novella has amongst the most architecturally significant recent buildings of any Italian railway station.

Firenze’s earliest railway station was the “Leopolda”, built in 1844 and designed by Robert Stephenson, the son of the man who invented railways. It was one of Italy’s very first railway stations, and was located outside the city’s walls. Four years later a second station, the “Maria Antonia”, was built inside the city walls, which was an important innovation for the railway concept prevailing in those days. “Maria Antonia” station was demolished to make way for the present station facing the church of Santa Maria Novella: a masterpiece of rationalist architecture, one of the finest expressions of the modern movement in Italian architecture.

The station was designed in 1932 by a group of architects known as the Gruppo Toscano (Tuscan Group); the building was constructed between 1932 and 1934. The building is one of the key works of Italian modernism, but has little to do with the Italian Rationalism movement, being more strongly influenced by the Viennese architecture of Loos and Hoffman, with perhaps a nod to Wright; but it is the building’s complete originality that makes it outstanding. The competition to design the station was controversial but the approval by Mussolini of the Gruppo Toscano project was hailed as an official acceptance of modernity.

The Gruppo Toscano was only responsible for the main frontal building of the station. The heating plant, platforms, other facilities and details such as benches were all designed in a contrasting style by the official Ministry of Communications architect, Angiolo Mazzoni.

Near platform #8 is a memorial plaque in remembrance of the train loads of Jewish people who were deported from Italy to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. I haven’t noticed this one actually, maybe that’s the reason to come back there one more time.

What I’ve noticed at that station, is that is has a lot of space – two separate sections are completely different one from another separated by glass doors that reminded me of old movies, but that’s totally understandable concerning when the station was built. The signs such as “Ristorante” and “Salone” charmed me for the same reason.

This time less pictures, more txt, but hope this was interesting :)

More of Firenze coming soon.