Ramble

It's late in the afternoon in Florence and I'm drowning in the city's charms. I've spent my time here wandering aimlessly, letting the streets unfurl beneath my shoes, enjoying my freedom from the shackles of itinerary. My feet are attuned to the cobbled streets. I no longer cower in the shadows of looming architecture. I feel as though, a mere thirty hours after my arrival, I have the measure of the place.

It's a city of sly colours, lulling you with terracottas and ochres before it stabs out with frenetic flashes of ruby tomatoes, blue waters, chestnut curls. It's a city of sudden history, where the streets buck from the pressure of bygone eras crammed beneath and the husks of ancient palaces now give birth to museums, shops, cafes. It is a city that first embraces you and then squeezes, leaving you breathless beneath its heaving mass of culture. Yes, yes; I know the secrets of this place now.

Then I walk into the Piazza della Repubblica – a place I have been many times before – and every thought in my head tatters and flies away.

It's one of those rare moments when it seems that everything in the world has conspired to make something sublime. The early evening light falls in gentle curtains on ancient stone, rendering it soft and roseate. The blocky arms of the buildings that hold the square are made delicate by the last glow of the sinking sun, and even the incongruous merry-go-round becomes something otherworldly. Shadows gather beneath the towering triumphal arch, a darkening frame for the lone singer who stands before it, gently illuminated by a crescent of candles.

She sings a song as familiar to me as home, though I never know the name. It is a thing of heart-rending beauty, a yearning hymn filled with cascading notes that punctuate the thickening night with long, tremulous peals that hang and hang and hang in the air. Each one of those notes holds within it a small kind of eternity. Though the square is filled with people, there is no movement during the song – or maybe it's just that I don't remember any, utterly transfixed by the unbelievable loveliness of the entire scene.

It lasts for perhaps three minutes, and only when the last lingering echo has faded away do I fumble for my phone, thinking to record what I can of whatever's left. But there is nothing left; the singer crouches to pack away her things, movement returns to the piazza, and Florence is just Florence once again. The world goes back to the way it was before.

I don't.