Nun the wiser

Two Dominican nuns dressed in white tunics and black cappas ride bicycles toward the Convento di Santa Maria Novella. The first, a newcomer to Florence, looks around in wonder and tries to imagine the city as it would have been during the Renaissance. She sighs and says to her more seasoned companion: “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever come this way before.”

She imagines the bells ringing on sex workers’ hats. Merchants exuberantly calling out their wares in the busy marketplace: “Pesce fresco!” “Pane caldo!” Minstrels playing soft, melodic tunes on lutes and mandolins. The clop-clop of horses pulling carts and carriages through bustling streets over cobblestones. The rhythmic clang of hammer on metal in the workshops of blacksmiths and armourers. Rushed prayers. Slow gossip. The animated debates of humanists, poets and philosophers in the gardens and courts of the Pitti Palace. The soft, swishing movements of nobles and courtiers showily adorned in velvet and silk at the Palazzo Vecchio. The call of the public executioner. The hushed murmur of Renaissance nuns inside their cells at night.

Her riding companion piously replies: “You’ll get used to it, pet. It’s the cobblestones.”