“I felt a pulsating in my heart. Life was draining out of me, while I walked fearing a fall.”

In this quote French writer Henri Stendhal describes how the overabundance of aesthetic beauty in Florence nearly drove him insane. This curious phenomenon (dubbed Stendhalissimo by the medical community) afflicts a surprisingly large number of the tourists who flock to Tuscany’s capital city each year, anxious for a glimpse into the heart of a true Renaissance culture. A bit skeptical?

Open up a copy of La Nazione, Florence’s leading newspaper, on any given day of the week and right there in black and white, are the accounts of a handful of tourists who bumped their noggins while fainting in front of one of the cities many monuments or renowned pieces of artwork.

But on the cobbled streets of Florence this powerful dose of sensory overload isn’t always a manifestation of admiration for the sheer beauty of the city. Interwoven within the variegated fabric of stunning art and architecture that dominates the city is a certain thread of chaos.

On the cities’ main thoroughfares swarms of Vespas clash with the mass of compact cars and Mercedes delivery trucks that clog their paths. In smaller streets, tiny motos buzz around pedestrians seemingly unaware of anything that threatens to impede their progress.

Walking through the center of the city, tourists are greeted by a veritable symphony of horns and sirens, which ring through the air producing melodies that reverberate through the narrow alleyways and assail the senses of anyone within earshot. The air itself is a mixture of various pollutants, and it’s perfectly normal to see bicycle-riding Florentines donning surgical masks to protect their lungs.

The city’s main river (the Arno), which flooded the downtown area in 1966 damaging many works of art and historical documents, now flows along much like a gelatinous green ooze and is often blamed for the city’s rat problem. The deep yellow ochre and gray pietra serena of the buildings can seem dull and morose in comparison to the vibrancy of buildings in cities like Venice and Naples, and with the addition of corporations such as McDonald’s and Blockbuster Video, many people believe that Florence is losing its charms.

Along the streets upon which Dante Alighieri sought out his beloved Beatrice, homeless women cradle tiny babies in their arms pleading for alms while aristocratic old Italians pass by wearing fur coats on their backs and looks of indifference on their faces.

It seems bi-monthly that some left-wing student group organizes a protest against the perpetually unstable Italian government.

So where is this aesthetic beauty that nearly sent Stendhal running to the closest looney bin? Where is the Florence that raised the likes of scholars such as Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante and Michelangelo?

Well, if you squint your eyes and look very closely, somewhere buried behind the scaffolding that encircles Brunelleschi’s great dome and underneath the tarps that cloak and shroud the sculptures in the loggia of Piazza Signoria you’ll find a tiny glimmer – a spark that glows like an eternal flame. To the untrained human eye it is nearly invisible, but once you have seen it and you know it’s there, it’s unmistakable.

After making the trek up to Piazzale Michelangelo and San Miniato you’ll catch a glimpse of it as you look over the cement ledge across the city of Florence into the mountains on the horizon.

It shows itself in the carefully sculpted lines of Michelangelo’s David as it stands in the Accademia surrounded by tour groups and it’s in the brushstrokes of Botticelli’s “La Primavera” in room 10 of the Uffizi gallery.

When the streetsweepers go by at three in the morning and the dust from the previous day is brushed to the side into a tidy pile, it’s somewhere imbedded deep within the debris.

It’s the emotion behind the cries of “Bravo” that erupt in the Teatro Pergola when a visiting pianist lets his shoulders slump, signaling the end to a piece played flawlessly by heart. And it’s in the respectful silence of an audience as the final note of an operatic aria slowly fades into peaceful oblivion.

If you look closely, it’s a flicker in the eyes of the vendors in the San Lorenzo market as they convince prospective customers in broken English that they can’t live without a new leather jacket or the latest pair of acid wash jeans.

And it’s evident in the reckless abandon with which young children chase pigeons in the piazza near the church of Santa Croce.

It’s in the flour that goes into the hearty Tuscan bread. And its in the smiles of the elderly couple who run the small coffee shop near the west side of the Duomo, who sometimes “accidently” charge for only one pastry instead of two.

It’s humanity, no more no less. And it’s the force that thrives within the leisurely, relaxed pace of a city that Henri Stendhal and I will never forget.

Christy Steffen is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Ruthven. She is in Florence, Italy for a semester as part of the study abroad program.