Passage to India

For many years oriental cuisine has been popular in Europe. Japanese restaurants are the new fashion among the young; sushi has nearly replaced the dates for pizza we had “unlike the young” a few decades before. On one hand we fear the East, and on the other we are fascinated by the birth, decline and revival for this ancient culture, for its colors and flavors, where spices have always played a primary role, thanks in part to the trade started under the Medici.
Yes Florence is of course in the west, but it has always had eastern inclinations. In 1439 the city witnessed the schism of the Church dividing into the western and eastern halves. Less well known is the important oriental movement that formed in the 19th century. In 1878 Angelo De Gubernatis, professor of Sanskrit, oriental enthusiast, writer and publicist, as well as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, organized the IV International Congress of Orientalists in Florence, where he staged an “Eastern Exposition” with manuscripts and Gandhara art, then little known in Italy.
It was an extraordinary event, one that opened Florence’s mind to other cultures, during which citizens were seized with an irresistible desire for the exotic, with celebrations and parades (original photos from the times). Florence even had the Royal Institute of Advanced Studies (now University), where they taught Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Semitic languages, Persian, history and geography of East Asia. The university was even printing books in these languages, taking advantage of the Medici era printing presses.
In 1886, De Gubernatis founded the Indian Museum, having brought exquisitely beautiful objects from Bombay (now Mumbai) and other parts of India including a large amount of bronze and plaster casts depicting Indian deities. He bought precious objects to show the refined craftsmanship enjoyed by the upper classes. You can admire a chess board with ebony and ivory pieces, a decorated ostrich egg given to him by the King of Cutch, a decorated palanquin which was a gift of the Kashmir Governor, beautiful ceramics from Delhi, sculptures that were part of the temple of Chittor and beautiful paper mache toys from the king of Udaipur. There are also wonderful, rare figurines depicting religious deities from Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).
Unfortunately not everyone is aware of this wonderful museum in Florence, which, with its rooms frescoed in Punjab style, located inside the Museum of Natural History (in Via del Proconsolo). Its rooms are full of statues, textiles, sculptures and erotic tiles as well as precious jewels worthy of the tales of the Maharaja.
Today, when we often talk of the East, we discover that Florence offers a wonderful passage to India.

This post is also available in: Italian French Spanish