With a decaying elegance, the buildings sprout from mountainsides. The new exists beside the dead, mere ghosts of their former glory. The houses move and progress, pieces forgotten and discarded like exoskeletons.

There is a dusty, beat up loveliness to Florence’s walls. Exquisite grace exists as one with colorful, stringy graffiti. This is a place well loved and well lived in. From the earthly marring, the buildings rise tall, stately and solid.

There had been doubts. Concern that this wasn’t where I belonged, that I should have been going elsewhere. But as I made my way from Pisa to Florence, a calm fell upon me as a blanket. This is where I ought to be.