TASTE 6: 12-14 March 2011_Stazione Leopolda_ Florence

Choose your stay at 
MARIO'S HOTEL
for Taste 6

Pitti Immagine presents the sixth edition of Taste, the event devoted to excellence in Italian food - featuring about 200 specialist and niche companies: three days of sampling, discovering, buying, events and lifestyles dedicated to taste.

Taste is a fun and absorbing experience for members of the gastronimic and catering trade as well as the general public, who can discover the myriad ways to express and experiment with taste today.

Taste describes and presents the roots of Italian food and wine culture, its extraordinary diversity and ability to become an international heritage. For this reason it represents a unique meeting place for italian and international high-end food professionals, always looking for genuine, original flavors.
The last edition was attended by over 10.000 visitors, and obtained great press and TV coverage.

FUORIDITASTE

Fuoriditaste is a program of off-site events: a schedule of food and wine events involving the whole city of Florence, featuring the city's restaurants, specially food stores and boutiques, art galleries, theaters and museums. The last edition of Fuoriditaste in March 2010 was a great success with public and critics alike, and presented over 100 events in some of the city's top locations.

Battistero di San Giovanni - Baptistery of St. John

The Florence Baptistery or Battistero di San Giovanni is a religious building in Florence (Tuscany), Italy, which has the status of a minor basilica.
The octagonal Baptistery stands in both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza di San Giovanni, across from the Duomo cathedral and the Giotto bell tower. It is one of the oldest buildings in the city, built between 1059 and 1128. The architecture is in Florentine Romanesque style.
The Baptistery is renowned for its three sets of artistically important bronze doors with relief sculptures. The south doors were done by Andrea Pisano and the north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. The east pair of doors was dubbed by Michelangelo "the Gates of Paradise".
The Italian poet Dante Alighieri and many other notable Renaissance figures, including members of the Medici family, were baptized in this baptistery. In fact, until the end of the nineteenth century, all Catholic Florentines were baptized here.
The Baptistery has eight equal sides with a rectangular addition on the west side.
The sides, originally in sandstone, are clad in geometrically patterned colored marble, white Carrara marble with green Prato marble inlay, reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. The pilasters on each corner, originally in grey stone, were decorated with white and dark green marble in a zebra-like pattern by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1293.
The style of this church would serve as prototype, influencing many architects, such as Leone Battista Alberti, in their design of Romanesque churches in Tuscany.
The exterior is also ornamented with a number of artistically significant statues by Andrea Sansovino (above the Gates of Paradise), Giovan Francesco Rustici, Vincenzo Danti (above the south doors) and others.
The design work on the sides is arranged in groupings of three, starting with three distinct horizontal sections. The middle section features three blind arches on each side, each arch containing a window. These have alternate pointed and semicircular tympani. Below each window is a stylized arch design. In the upper fascia, there are also three small windows, each one in the center block of a three-panel design.
The apse was originally semicircular, but was it was made rectangular in 1202.
The vast interior of the Baptistery recalls the interior of the Pantheon in Rome. The interior is rather dark, light entering through small windows in the ambulatory and through the lantern. The interior is divided in a lower part with columns and pilasters and an upper part with an ambulatory. The Florentines didn't spare any trouble or expense to decorate the baptistery. The interior walls are clad in dark green and white marble with inlaid geometrical patterns. The niches are separated by monolithic columns of Sardinian granite. The marble revetment of the interior was begun in the second half of the eleventh century.
The rectangular apse was faced with mosaics in 1225.

Hotel Mario's in the area of San Lorenzo Market

Just in the area outside the Central Market are numerous and are open every day from 9:00am to 7:00pm (except Mondays in winter). The vendors sell a great variety of products and you could spend hours roaming through them all.What about the histoy of the market? Because the population was growing and the New Market, under the Loggia del Porcellino was clearly insufficient, it was decided to create three new markets instead of one, taking advantage of the occasion to revitalize one of the older neighborhoods in Florence called the Camaldoli. The largest market would be constructed in San Lorenzo, the Herb Market in Sant’Ambrogio and yet another, which was demolished in the beginning of the 1900s, in San Frediano.
It was a great idea but San Lorenzo had no room for a new market. It was therefore necessary to open up a vast area in the labyrinth of narrow streets that had grown up outside of the first set of Roman walls and between the two sets of medieval walls.The ecclesiastical neighborhood centered around the city's original cathedral, San Lorenzo (it was outside the city walls, and, according to tradition, was funded by a pious Jewish woman), and the commercial neighborhood centered around the mercatino, the street market, and the Mercato Centrale, the city’s major produce market. The former, with Brunelleschi and Michelangelo’s Sacristies, Pontormo’s paintings, Michelangelo’s sculptures, and the Laurentian Library (also designed by Michelangelo) is one of Florence’s intellectual cornerstones. In these days the market is specialized in clothing, leather goods, gifts and souvenirs, and is one of several places in the city frequented by tourists; it’s possible to find a wide choice of leather jacket and bags, jeans, t-shirts, shoes…everything of reasonably good quality and at reasonable prices.However The main attractions of San Lorenzo (apart from shopping, of course) are the San Lorenzo Basilique (made up of several buildings including the San Lorenzo church, the Brunelleschi Sagrestia Vecchia, the annex cloisters, the Canonici area and the Laurenziana Library with the famous staircase by Leonardo da Vinci) consecrated by St. Ambrose in 393, it is the oldest church in the city. It was then rebuilt along Romanesque lines in 1060. The present building dates to 1423 and was designed and built by Brunelleschi) and the Cappelle Medicee (the Medicean Chapels – are a precious tomb which preserve the Medici family remains, representing the mausoleum of the big family).
Hotel Mario's is located between San Lorenzo Market, Central Market, Santa Maria Novella church and the central railway station Santa Maria Novella.This is a great opportunity to visit the city in a very fantastic location. Reserve a room in the old historic building at Hotel Mario's, you'll enjoy part of Florence's history.
Visit www.hotelmarios.com or write an email to info@hotelmarios.com