The Botticelli Secret

Florence, 1482.
Florence looks like gold and smells like sulphur.
The building are massive, gorgeous and epic. They are made of glowing gilded stone and silver marble. Yet the smells - animal dung, human duste, rotting meat and vegetables left in the gutter from market - would make a tanner blanch. In fact, the city is a mass of contradictions. It is build for giants, with the huge loggias, toothsome palaces and many pillars, yet the Forentines are a tiny people and scuttle around the plinths like brighly dressed pygmies.