>>17945245 pb
this is for medici/pizza thread.
the piazzale michaelangelo in florence you mentioned reminded me of how Hannibal Lecter lived in florence in thomas harris books and film. He was also a Sforza (another papal family) by his mother's lineage.
also wanted to note the medici / medicine connection.
https://hannibal.fandom.com/wiki/Simonetta_Sforza-Lecter
Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), meanwhile, is lying low, as ‘Dr Fell’, in Florence, Italy, where he lives and works in the library of the Palazzo Capponi, via dei Bardi 36. Avaricious cop Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) spies on Fell as he sips coffee in a cafe on Piazza della Republica, and the doctor is spotted on security cameras as he buys hand cream at the Pharmacy of Santa Maria Novella, via delle Scala 16.
Pazzi buys a silver bracelet (on which to collect Lecter’s fingerprints) on the Ponte Vecchio, over the River Arno. It’s beneath the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo that Lecter foils (and, naturally, guts) the pickpocket, and that Pazzi washes the blood from his hands in the wild boar fountain, Il Porcellino.
The opera (which was written specially for the film) was staged, coincidentally, in the courtyard of the Pazzi Chapel, next to the monastery of Santa Croce. The square with the monumental sculptures is, of course, Piazza della Signoria (seen also in the rather different A Room With A View) overshadowed by the Palazzo Vecchio. Although the interior of the Palazzo was reconstructed in a warehouse just outside Florence,
The vast estate of vengeful Mason Verger (Gary Oldman) is Biltmore House on the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The Biltmore House itself is a 255-room French Renaissance-style chateau, built in the 1890s for the Vanderbilt family. It was designed by Richard Hunt Morris, whose other claim to fame on the design front is the plinth for the Statue of Liberty. The house contains the Vanderbilts’ collection of paintings, and it’s open to the public. It’s on Route 25, three blocks north from Route 40. You can also seen in Hal Ashby’s satire Being There. https://movie-locations.com/movies/h/Hannibal.php
in terms of pizza symbolism, we have the "Pizza Connection"
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-pizza-connection-35th-anniversary-040519
His name was Gaetano Badalamenti, and he was the former top boss of the Sicilian Mafia. Though banished from Sicily by rival mobsters in 1978, Badalamenti had continued to secretly lead one of the world’s most prolific drug cartels. Frequently on the move, he ultimately traveled with his wife and oldest son to Madrid. Pietro Alfano, a nephew who was his top operative in the American Midwest, took a flight from Chicago to meet them.