A Times Editorial

Taking a bite out of Florence

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 14, 2000

Ever since the Renaissance, when the Medicis commenced building palaces and buying sculpture from Michelangelo, the city of Florence has been noted for its commitment to high culture. From the gemlike Duomo to the golden hair of Botticelli's Venus, everything about Florence says elegance, refinement and good taste.

No wonder Hannibal Lecter, the weirdly charming serial killer and consumer of human flesh created by novelist Thomas Harris, wants to hang out there. Florence is, among other things, a good place to find a nice Chianti.

But not all Florentines are thrilled that the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs is being made in their city. Impervious to the star power of Sir Anthony Hopkins, the Green Party and the Popular Party, members of the city's ruling coalition, have written to the mayor asking him to withdraw permission for filming. They are particularly upset over a ghastly murder set in the art-packed Palazzo Vecchio, which they fear might become so imprinted on people's minds that they ignore the city's wealth of museums and begin to visit only for "morbid thrills and vulgar horror." In other words, it's an image thing.

Maybe they're worried because the last time somebody called Hannibal visited the area, he arrived over the Alps with a marauding army and bunch of elephants, making a shocking mess. Or maybe Florence has been so successful in suppressing the gruesome aspects of its long past in favor of its sunnier charms that these objecting politicians don't want anyone reminded. After all, Florence was the city of Dante, who gave us the most enduring vision of hell, and the birthplace of opera, an art form that depends on people dying every which way. And it's the city of Savonarola, the stake-happy 15th century monk who liked nothing more than a well-cooked heretic.

The city fathers shouldn't fret over Hannibal Lecter's celluloid murders: They are just a fictional burnish to a place where beauty and death have always co-existed.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.