Firenze is not the city where I was born, nor is it the city where I have lived, of the numerous cities I have lived in. But it is a city the I know well, where I have hung out for more than twenty years, that I love and I hate with equal passion. I haven’t been to Firenze since August, 2020. I imagine it, practically tourist-free, in the early days of Spring 2021, the second spring since COVID erupted into our lives and into our cities.

While I prepared my piece for Immersive Cities, I enjoyed every last second of these recordings, made in March this year in the quartieri across the two sides of the Arno river. Oltrarno in the morning: San Frediano, the arguments in Piazza Tasso, Santo Spirito with its market. In the afternoon the Firenze we all know, on the other bank: the historical centre from Ponte Santa Trinita, Piazza della Signoria, the bells of the Duomo, the Loggia del Porcellino up to the birthplace of Dante, 700 years after his death.

And from there to Santa Croce, via Sant’Ambrogio and the market, and the walk down to the station to catch the train from Santa Maria Novella, just the way I remember it, ever too crowded in a city which is too hot, too busy, too famous. In my relationship with the sound scape I prefer “small” sounds, well defined, which tell us about who they are and what they do before they are sucked back into the background noises. As I prepared and organised this material I let myself be intrigued by the stories of the voices which populate Firenze in the COVID era, a Firenze where shy tourist voices are lost to the Florentine accent, which is only occasionally interspersed with voices from other parts of Italy, from one side to the other of the Arno.

Recordings made with the assistance of Marco Galardi.