Enjoying a mid-afternoon snack.

 Part of the Medici castle. This was the family that owned Florence. They settled here as poorer workers, became bankers, and then owned the town. Michelangelo became one of their adopted sons in a sense. They didn't have any real power, but had a lot of friends in high places that they paid to make things go their way. The people of Florence hated them because they were vey ostentatious and self-serving.

 This is a tower house, the high-rise apartment complex of the dark ages. There was no room to spread homes out, so they went up instead. The original windows were those tiny holes you see. Access was not until the first floor and you got in by using a very heavy cumbersome ladder. It made it very difficult to go in and out so the lady of the house usually only left once a week for church on Sunday. Now that is crazy.

 This is the front of the church that Michelangelo was buried in. Remember, he was to be buried in Rome, but his friends came and stole his body in the middle of the night and rode back to Florence where they felt he belonged because this was where he was from, even though most of his work is found in Rome. Galileo is also buried in this church.

This is the church of the Francescan Friars called Santo Spirito Church. The friars were the first to give a young seventeen year old Michelanglo access to corpses so he could study the way skeletal and muscular structure of the body in order to better his work. They had access to dead bodies because of the grave yard.