Dinner in a frescoed palazzo accompanied by stories of the '66 Florence flood
I had dinner tonight at the apartment of Massimo and Vittoria Melandri in Florence. Their place was beautiful, a 14th-century building restructured in the 19th century, which is when they frescoed all the ceilings and the walls.Gorgeous.
What happened to the frescoes
The ceiling paintings in the main salon where we dined were a bit obscured by soot, since (as explained mamma, Massmimo's 86-year-old mother, who lives on the top floor of the building and who joined us for dinner) two families were living in that small space during World War II, and as the electricity and gas were cut off, they cooked by building little fires in the middle of the room.Massimo can't clean them up properly since they aren't technically frescoes but rather paintings on the dry plaster, so to remove the soot would also remove the paint.
Massimo had managed, however, to clean the 20th-century whitewash off the walls, which are (buon) frescoed with tromp l'oeil architectural elements.
However, the surface of the plaster is microscopically pocked and flaking, so the frescoes are milky and faded looking.
"They need to be wet to see them properly," said Massimo, and walked over from his chair to swipe a patch of wall with a damp rag. Suddenly, the colors burst off the wall in all their 19th-century splendor, only to fade slowly again as the plaster dried.
