Tours / Italian breakfast with visit to the Chiostro dello Scalzo: a silent and intact corner of Florentine life in the Renaissance

How do Italians eat breakfast? Entering a pastry shop in the morning, you can notice many people crowded in front of the counter of croissants and pieces of pastry specifically baked for the morning breakfast: simple croissants and brioche, with honey, cream or jam, pastries with cream of rice, rice puddings in shortcrust pastry, cream puffs, manine and the whole series of typical breakfast pastries at the bar.

Everyone points to their favorite pastry and the pastry chef hands it across the counter with dessert tongs. While you bite into the irresistible pastry, you go to the coffee counter and order the typical coffee, which in Italy already means espresso, it doesn't matter to specify, a coffee is an espresso, but in the morning you can also order a macchiato ( coffee with a stain of milk), a cappuccino or a latte macchiato (milk with a stain of coffee). In short, we will have breakfast together and we will reveal to you all the secrets and behavioral codes of a proper Italian breakfast!

Then the time will come to enter the Chiostro dello Scalzo, a rare pearl of the Renaissance, secluded from mass tourist flows, a place of peace, where you can still breathe the air of the medieval and Renaissance brotherhoods.

It was frescoed in the sixteenth century by Andrea del Sarto, the "error-free painter" contemporary of Michelangelo, who in this solemn place created the most magnificent monochrome fresco in the world. In addition to the life of Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence, to whom the Cloister is dedicated, we will clarify the function and usefulness of the Confraternities in the medieval and Renaissance world, who the brothers were, how they lived, what rules were in force within the organization. A lively story in a muffled, peaceful atmosphere, far from the confusion of the bar where we ate our Italian breakfast and from the crowds that fill the streets, squares and iconic museums of Florence!

An all-Italian morning, from breakfast to the place of quiet meditation which is the extraordinary Chiostro dello Scalzo!