Live Virtual Tour: Highlights of Florence with Kate Bolton-Porciatti
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Join us on a live walking tour through the streets of Florence! We will be led by a local guide and expert, Kate Bolton-Porciatti. Our itinerary traces the Ancient Roman origins of the city and its later flourishing as it developed into one of Europe’s most beautiful and wealthy cities in the medieval and Renaissance periods. We also see how the city was transformed in the late 19th century when it became the first, proud capital of the newly unified Italy. We’ll explore the arts and cultural traditions of this living museum – taking in medieval tower houses and Renaissance 'palazzi', historic churches, monuments, and statues that narrate two millennia of Florence's history. We’ll pause at the celebrated Duomo, crowned by Brunelleschi’s majestic dome, and the 11th-century Baptistery. And en route, we’ll touch on the city’s café culture and sample some of its distinctive culinary traditions. Led by an expert on Italian culture, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, this Conversation will bring the spirit of Italian Renaissance city living into your own home. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased appreciation and understanding of some of Florence's main cultural sights as well as its hidden corners.
Kate Bolton-Porciatti is a professor of Italian cultural history and music at the Istituto Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence, where she teaches BA and MA courses in the humanities. She also lectures at the British Institute, Florence, and at the Chigiana Music Academy in Siena. Kate has published extensively as an academic and a journalist; she is a music critic for BBC Music and a travel writer for The Daily Telegraph, UK. Before moving to Italy permanently in 2005, she was a senior producer and broadcaster for BBC Arts & Classical Music in London and has won prestigious Jerusalem and Sony Awards for her programs. She did her M.Phil. thesis in Italy, exploring the musical culture of early Renaissance Florence.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
Wonderful tour. Well worth the time. Kate is wonderful! You will learn and see a lot!
Traveling through the streets and seeing the sites with Kate was a sheer delight. Kate never disappoints!
This was a great tour of Florence since we can’t really be there in person. There weren’t too many people and it was a beautiful time of day. I was also grateful she had done some segments of the tour the day before to maximize the sunlight and to find places open.....
Thank you very much for making this available to us (for now) armchair travelers.
Excellent! Kate obviously knows her stuff, and enjoys talking to us about it! She is an excellent presenter. And the delivery by Kate, her cameraman and the link man at Context was very slick, switching smoothly between pre-prepared video and live presentation (with all the background noise and distraction making it very dynamic - made us feel that we were actually there!) The format worked very well indeed. Well done!
Excellent tour Kate- thanks so much!