At the end of a calm and quite after­noon on our first day in Flo­rence, the air sud­den­ly whis­tled, then howled. It took me a few moments to com­pre­hend that the crash­ing sounds all around were the out­side win­dow shut­ters, flap­ping about and bang­ing in total aban­don. I ran around clos­ing win­dows and grab­bing the laun­dry that had been hang­ing to dry out on the bal­cony, so that our pants and shirts would­n’t end up in the streets three floors below, or strand­ed on a neigh­bor’s roof.

An hour or so lat­er, it became still again just as sud­den­ly, and the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the sky for a few last min­utes. I grabbed my cam­era and snapped this photo.