Description
Wine Doors of Florence brings remnants of a distant life to the present day. The collection depicts a long-forgotten element of daily Renaissance life in the city. The wine doors were “serving hatches” that allowed the local nobility to sell their wines directly from cellars located throughout the city. They date from the Medici period, around 1532, and were in use until the early 1900s.
There are 146 documented doors inside the ancient city walls. The passage of time has seen them repurposed as restaurant menu shelves, door intercoms, and letterboxes. Some have become an evolving canvas for creative graffiti artists. Others are simply ignored—integrated into the face of air-conditioning ducts or gas meter cupboards.
Wandering the streets and back alleys of one of Italy’s most iconic cities, Italian gastronomic culture scholar and photographer Robbin Gheesling brings to life this often overlooked, if not entirely unseen part of Florence. The result is a glimpse of the undiscovered. Her photos capture actual doorways into Florence’s history that have nearly vanished amongst the distractions of a modern tourist mecca.
