Florence, Italy

In which I go in search of E.M. Forester's Florence, don't discover it, but decide that the world really is full of beautiful things, if only you know where (and how) to look.

I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty…I reached the poiont where one encounters celestial sensations…Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call “nerves”. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling…

-Stendahl - Rome, Naples and Florence

{Florence, Italy}

The French writer Stendhal visited Florence in 1817 - one stop on a lengthy grand tour of Italy - and wrote about the experience in his book Rome, Naples and Florence. One afternoon, while visiting the Basilica of Santa Croce, he stopped into the Niccolini Chapel to view its famous frescoes by Baldassarre Franceschini - the artist known as Il Volterrano. The way he tells it, he was lucky to make it out alive. He wrote that “the life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling…” and that he had “heart palpitations”. The beauty, it seemed, was too much for him.

19th century drama queen? Or was there actually something to the swooning?

Between 1977 and 1986 a Florentine psychologist reported over 100 incidents of visitors being admitted to local hospitals after becoming overcome while visiting Florence’s art treasures. To be clear, this is not exhaustion we’re talking about…not weariness at spending too long dragging your feet through the Uffizi Galleries. This is acute sickness: fainting, nausea, even heart troubles. The psychologist gave the phenomenon a name: the Stendhal Syndrome.