A chain of rooms, one by one
Florence, Italy — Painting galleries.
Look at that red carpet first.
The rooms follow one after another; the wall colour changes often — red, green, blue-grey in turn. Paintings hang densely; some rooms hold a single sculpture, others are full on every wall. The ceilings keep their old mouldings, a crystal chandelier sits at the centre, windows open on one side and light cuts diagonally across the glass cases. Move fast and you miss the small ones at the door frames.
Rooms are not separated by numbers but by a shift in wall colour. Past a doorway, the red of the previous room has not yet left your eye when the next has pressed into a solid dark green, with only a single figure at the centre and empty space enough to hear your steps. After the full loop, what stays is mostly this one-room-at-a-time rhythm, and you cannot say in front of which painting you stood longest.
