Florence is a city of art and culture and filled with edible delights. It is all overwhelming.
I posted a dining guide to Florence (Firenze) on my first website, called MangiaFirenze in 1997. I then changed the website to Divina Cucina, when no one knew that Mangia was to eat and didn’t know that in Italian Florence is called Firenze. I was inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia to create Divina Cucina, Divine Cooking or Kitchen.
I arrived in Florence in 1988, not planning on staying, but it was love at first sight. I fell in love with the city!
When I was living downtown Florence, I always found lost tourists with the maps upside down and far from the center of town heading in the wrong direction. I always thought that the best guide to the city should show you where to eat near where you were. This was all pre-internet. Heavy guidebooks and hard to handle maps made life exciting.
I then created a online list of places to eat organized by neighborhoods, called Quartieri. Actually, I broke the city down even more. A quartiere, is 1/4 of the town. Four quartieri, which are represented by the four teams for the yearly historic soccer match.
Four colors, four churches, four teams.
San Giovanni ( rossi), Santo Spirito ( bianchi), Santa Croce (azzuri), Santa Maria Novella (verde)
My husband passed on a local saying, “facciamo il giro delle sette chiese” which always struck me. Touring the seven churches, meaning seeing the whole town! Yes, Italy is packed with churches and people tend to live in their “parishes”. Seeing at least seven of the churches means you have truly seen the town and the neighborhoods. Some of the best art is inside these churches.
Taste Florence 