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    This document summarizes an article from 2008 about Florence, Italy, then and now. It discusses how complaining about tourists is a time-honored tradition in Florence due to the large numbers. It references E.M. Forster's novel "A Room with a View" from 1908, noting how the characters expressed disdain for tourists. However, the document notes that feeling superior to other travelers is an irresistible urge. It also discusses how in the novel, one of the first things to do in Florence is throw away your guidebook, as depicted in a chapter where a character gets lost in Santa Croce Basilica without a guidebook.

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    This document summarizes an article from 2008 about Florence, Italy, then and now. It discusses how complaining about tourists is a time-honored tradition in Florence due to the large numbers. It references E.M. Forster's novel "A Room with a View" from 1908, noting how the characters expressed disdain for tourists. However, the document notes that feeling superior to other travelers is an irresistible urge. It also discusses how in the novel, one of the first things to do in Florence is throw away your guidebook, as depicted in a chapter where a character gets lost in Santa Croce Basilica without a guidebook.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    9 views1 page

    Florence, Then and Now, With A Literary Guide - The New York Times

    Uploaded by

    Khetam Bhire
    This document summarizes an article from 2008 about Florence, Italy, then and now. It discusses how complaining about tourists is a time-honored tradition in Florence due to the large numbers. It references E.M. Forster's novel "A Room with a View" from 1908, noting how the characters expressed disdain for tourists. However, the document notes that feeling superior to other travelers is an irresistible urge. It also discusses how in the novel, one of the first things to do in Florence is throw away your guidebook, as depicted in a chapter where a character gets lost in Santa Croce Basilica without a guidebook.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Florence, Then and Now

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    Tourists roll through the piazza near the Basilica di Santa


    Croce. The basilica plays an early part in “A Room With a
    View.” Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times

    By Adam Begley
    Nov. 28, 2008

    HERE'S what you do first in Florence:


    Complain about the tourists. It's a time-
    honored tradition and there's no avoiding it —
    or them, as they squeeze down the narrow
    streets. They choke the majestic Piazza
    Signoria; they overwhelm the Uffizi Gallery —
    so go ahead and get the grumbling over with.
    Hordes of them! A year-round blight! Why
    can't they just stay home! Or, if you're like E.
    M. Forster's “clever” lady novelist in “A Room
    With a View,” the one who exclaims in dismay
    over the bovine “Britisher abroad,” admit that
    you'd like to administer an exam “and turn
    back every tourist who couldn't pass it.”

    Snobbery is part of the sophisticated


    traveler's baggage — that hasn't changed at
    all in the 100 years since Forster, in his
    charming novel, skewered the supercilious
    “good taste” of those who look down on the
    “ill-bred people whom one does meet abroad.”
    Nowadays, when everyone in the ill-bred
    crowd is snapping photos of the Duomo with a
    cellphone, or swarming the Ponte Vecchio,
    plastic water bottle in hand, the urge to
    override touristic self-loathing by claiming for
    oneself a spurious superiority is pretty much
    irresistible; Forster, were he still around,
    would poke fun at that snobbish impulse with
    puckish glee. (But don't let that stop you from
    grousing about the sheer number of bodies
    blocking the view of the Arno.)

    The next thing to do in Florence, according to


    Forster, is throw away your guidebook.
    Chapter II of “A Room With a View” is called
    “In Santa Croce With No Baedeker,” and it's a
    gently comic interlude every honest visitor to
    that great Franciscan basilica will recognize
    as a mocking portrait of himself. Or herself, in
    the case of our young heroine, Lucy
    Honeychurch, who winds up alone in the vast
    interior of Santa Croce without her “Handbook
    to Northern Italy.”

    Show Full Article

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