Submitted by Natalie Truitt on the 2024 Winter ENGL program in Italy…
As the sun sets, one thing every visitor should try to add to their trip is watching the sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo. You can see an amazing view of the Tuscany countryside while also overlooking the city of Florence. Depending on where your hotel is located, this can be a long walk. From my hotel, it was a 35-minute walk, but with great company, the walk went by quickly and was filled with lots of giggles.
I would recommend getting there before the sun officially starts to set, so you can see the whole process and the sky changing from a baby blue, to a colorful sorbet sky. On your walk, you get past the less touristy part of Florence, on the other side of the Arno River, passing local restaurants that you can stop by for a drink before your climb or dinner on your way back down to the city center. As you walk, you will begin to climb up layers of stairs, but you will begin to see lines of people taking the same climb up to the Piazzale. Once you get to the Piazzale, there is no bad seat to watch the sun start to fall over the Tuscan mountains.
People will start to sit on the railings, crowd along the stairs, and join together to watch orange, pink, blue, and purple come mix to create a gallery-worthy painting. What’s even more beautiful than the rainbow sky, is people joining together. While I was there, people were joined together, singing in Italian, cheering for proposals, petting local dogs, and enjoying the falling sun and colorful sky over the Florence city horizon. (Submitted on January 28, 2024)