Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour -  Florence And Rome

This week, Kevin is heading south on the trail of the next wave of Grand Tourists, to the great Renaissance cities of Florence and Rome. He’s searching for art and architecture that would assault the senses, and which would inspire the rebuilding of London after one of the greatest disasters in its history: the Great Fire.

The Great Fire destroyed much of London, and not even St. Paul’s Cathedral could be saved from the flames. Christopher Wren, commissioned to replace the landmark with something even more spectacular, set his heart on a gravity-defying dome. In order to build Britain’s first large-scale dome, he’d need to draw inspiration from the vast, curved roofs of Renaissance Florence.

There aren’t many cities which look now like they did 500 years ago. Florence is one of them. Kevin lived there for a while and now he’s back to explore the city’s groundbreaking architecture. First stop is Il Duomo of Santa Maria, the building that Kevin describes as one of the greatest in the world.

After sampling ice cream made to the recipe devised upon its inception, Kevin walks the two kilometre private tunnel built by Medici ruler Cosimo I. Built to keep aristocrats segregated from common Florence, the tunnel lead to the Uffizi Gallery, filled with the most spectacular art of its age. In fact, the Uffizi has been described as the world’s first art gallery. It would become legendary amongst Grand Tourists lucky enough to experience it for themselves.

A flight over Rome reveals the formal layout of roads, buildings and grand monuments. Next stop, Kevin heads to Bramante’s Tempietto and draws delight from the fact that something so small could have become so universally influential.