The Global City

May 07, 2013 10:00

Today we had our first urban studies course with professor Adriano Boncompagni. He grew up in Florence and seems like a really cool guy. After briefly reviewing the course syllabus, we talked about the symbols and stereotypes of Italy before reviewing the political history of the country – specifically the region of Tuscany and Florence.

Unlike most European countries including France, England and Russia, Italy did not officially gain full independence until 1860. In fact, the country was under foreign rule for over fourteen centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire in about 400 A.D. But even after their independence in 1860, the different cultures and religious institutions made it extremely difficult to unify the land from the "Alps to Sicily". Thus, Italy really does not have a strong sense of national identity despite our external American perspectives.

Now Florence was the national capital of Italy from 1865-1871. During this period, the city grew immensely, but in 1871, the capital was moved to Rome. Even as the old medieval walls were removed to accommodate for the growing population, there were never any visible segregated ethnic sectors as in American metropolitan areas. This holds true even today among the 380,000 inhabitants of Florence. Also, to put things in perspective, Florence has quite a big tourist crowd: close to thirty million a year – second only to Rome.

After the classroom lecture, we headed over to the market where Adriano exposed us to a lot of meat. We're talking everything from rabbit to fish and everything in between. On the way over, we stopped at a stand outside and a few of us got lampredotto sandwiches. Lampredotto is cow stomach. There is also a tripe sandwich, but we all took Adriano's suggestion – he seemed to prefer lampredotto. It really wasn't too bad – they put a green sauce with parsley and a hot chile sauce on it. The consistency is pretty weird, but aside from the fact that it got stuck in my teeth, it was really flavorful.