In the fifteenth century, in Florence, Italy, a prosperous family took to investing heavily in the arts. The House of Medici not only acquired masterpieces with their vast wealth, they also patronized artists whose names you now know as the Ninja Turtles: Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo. Galileo Galilei was also on the payroll as a tutor to the Medici kids, until the Inquisition made it unfashionable to contradict Catholic orthodoxy. Even so, the Medici family loyally protected him for years after.
Among the beautiful architecture funded by the Medici family is the Uffizi, a palace originally meant to house the offices of Florence (Uffizi = Offices). It now enshrines the Uffizi Gallery, one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western World.
How I found myself in Florence is a tale of luck and warped priorities, best left for another time. Suffice it to say, that, after several amazing weeks, divided between Provence and Tuscany, in my last 36 hours, I could not marshal the energy to ride a train 175 miles roundtrip to see the marvels of Roma. I had arrived in Florence (concerned primarily with my departure from the local airport), checked into the Hotel Arno Bellariv, drained the mini-bar, perused a local attractions leaflet and was seized with the possibility of visiting some big-damn-deal museum in the last hours of a Saturday night. The next day I would fly away.
Imagine a warm and muggy August night, in the ancient and hallowed hometown of the Renaissance. Imagine also that the sky is pregnant with the promise of precipitation, and the flagstones are still damp in places from earlier showers. You best enter the Uffizi from the river side, via the arches beside the road fronting the Arno River, the Lugnarno Diaz. A long narrow courtyard, flanked by arched alcoves housing marble and bronze masterworks of sculpture, funnels you to the entrance. In the high season, the Uffizi is typically a several-hour wait for the unprepared and unconnected tourist. At five in the afternoon, so close to closing time, the line was a mere thirty minutes. I gawked, agape, at the public art of the courtyard, some ancient, others modern, a perfect appetizer for the indulgence ahead. A soul-stirring violin quavered from some shadowed and echoing hiding spot. Several times, I felt my breath catch in my throat in stifled sobs of ecstatic joy. 
I paid a discounted fee for my late and necessarily abbreviated visit, and when I finally stepped through the doors, I had just barely more than an hour until the museum closed. I adopted a strategy of trotting between galleries and scanning the walls for any famous paintings or sculptures to which I had been exposed in my sheltered middle-class suburban upbringing. Either my education was better than I give it credit, or the Uffizi just has so many important works of art, but I found something I knew in practically every nook of that beautiful museum. Even the ceiling is papered with amazing renaissance artworks. I’d try to lay my eyes on everything in an area and then I would have to move on. 
It was heart-breaking and exhilarating and frustrating and mind boggling. With so much history, and so many important artworks in that museum, I still feel like I disrespected the original Medici bequest and short-changed myself in the process – insult heaped upon injury. Ask me now what I saw and learned on that brief, magical evening in Firenze and all I can do is point to the familiar images in the souvenir guidebook I hastily grabbed in the gift shop. But I try not to forget.And THAT is exactly what it’s like to take Anatomy and Physiology in eight weeks.
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