It wasn’t far and was worth it, the buildings lit up against an inky-blue sky, the cathedral with its amazing dome, Giotto’s bell tower, the medieval-looking baptistery. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t rushed over to see this the minute I got here, though I was enjoying it now with Alex, almost as excited as I was, by my side. I was surprised the area was almost empty, tried to picture it in its day, fifteenth-century men in tunics and leggings, women in tightly corseted gowns, hair elaborately braided, people strolling or heading to the cathedral obviously built to impress, which it did.

“It never disappoints, does it?” Alex said.

I agreed, as if I’d been here before, staring up at the church facade that rose up in front of us, pink and green marble, sculpted figures in niches, recessed rose windows, every inch of it decorated like an oversize wedding cake. Looming behind it, Brunelleschi’s huge redbrick dome. All of it spectacular and beautiful but ominous too, the way the buildings seemed to lean forward, all the nooks and crannies and small pockets of darkness.

Alex pointed out a group of nearby soldiers in camo, heavy boots, and maroon berets, each holding an automatic rifle, pistols holstered at their waists. I thought they looked a little scary, but Alex proclaimed them “gorgeous,” wondering aloud why every Italian man looked like a movie star.

I led her toward the baptistery—did not feel like competing with handsome soldiers—the low and octagonal building of green-and-white-striped marble, possibly the oldest building in Florence, if I remembered correctly. But it was Ghiberti’s famous doors that I wanted to see. The Gates of Paradise, ten bronze and gold relief sculptures of Old Testament stories, Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, Abraham and Isaac.

An iron fence kept viewers a couple of feet away, but the reliefs were spotlighted, and we could see them perfectly, practically reach out and touch them. I knew the sculptor Ghiberti had won a competition to decorate a first set of doors at the age of twenty-four, then these, his second set, which took him the next twenty-five years of his life, and how Michelangelo had declared they were as beautiful as the gates to heaven, which gave them their name. I peered through the iron bars for a closer look at the artist’s astonishing handiwork, some of the figures almost freestanding, along with the illusion of space, reality, and perspective that defined the early Renaissance.

I leaned over to tell Alex another fact and was surprised when she wasn’t there; I had felt the presence of someone beside me. I found her a few yards away reading yet another plaque, this one about the flood of 1966 and how Ghiberti’s reliefs had fallen off and almost washed away. I reassured her the actual reliefs were in the cathedral museum, that these were casts. But I had not shaken the feeling of being watched. I looked around, taking in the nearly deserted square, noted how the spotlights illuminated the buildings but left the streets in darkness.