Facing Michelangelo at the Duomo Museum in Florence, Italy

Visits to the Basilica, the Uffizi, and the Accademia to see David are all de rigueur on any trip to Florence, but take a break from the swarms and duck into the intimate Duomo Museum, a venue virtually ignored by tourists, to experience Michelangelos unfinished Piet. His famous polished work of the same name at St. Peters in Rome sits yards from view, and shielded behind bullet-proof glass. The sculpture in Florence stands open for contemplation in a serene circular mezzanine. Few works of art evoke the anguish that accompanies loss from death as this rough piece of marble. So hard and impure in fact that Michelangelo abandoned the work after attacking it with a knife in anger. Scholars continue to debate whether the male figure represents Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, but all agree that the tragic wizened face is that of Michelangelo himself.