Floods in Florence

November is the month when Florence floods. After the downpours of September and October, the Arno rises a bit, turns a bit more brown.

Some years, the water is catastrophic: 1177, 1333, 1557, 1740, 1844 and 1864. The most damaging, of course, was the flood of Nov. 4, 1966, when much of the old town was under water for days. Santa Croce, the Biblioteca Nazionale, the Brancacci Chapel were all filled with varying levels of brown muck.

I just finished a great book about that flood, Dark Water, by Robert Clark. Following one work, Cimabue's Crocifisso c. 1288, from mold to "restoration," Clark shows how even Florence's masterpieces couldn't overcome the blind ambition and bureaucratic morass that sometimes define life in this place.

Despite overflow basins upstream and high-tech river level monitoring, I'm looking askance at the Arno this month.