Mix one part Pucci and one part antique landmark and what do you get?  A moment of magic.

Step 1. Take a famous old Italian monument (Medieval is the best flavor if you can get it.  It is hard to come by, so just do the best you can):

For the purpose of our post today, we will start with the Baptistery in Florence.  It is the striped building in the front of this 3 part complex, which includes the Cathedral (il duomo), the campanile (belltower), and the octagonal Baptistery.

Step 2.  Add a colorful vintage design from a later master, say something from the 20th century. The Marquise Emilio Pucci will do nicely for our demonstration.

We’ll use this Pucci scarf today, which was created in 1957 with the Florence Baptistery as its central motif.  Pucci created a series of silk scarves using the most famous world cities as inspiration.  He was a Florentine, so it is quite interesting that, of all the structures in his native city, he chose the Baptistery above all others as his iconic symbol of his town.

Step 3. Put the ingredients into a large vessel of some sort, kind of like a giant cocktail shaker, while wearing a pair of vintage Pucci capri pants and a top fashioned from the same silk as the scarf you are shaking up, as seen above.

This next step is important to the success of your final product: Be sure to notice your background while you are mixing things up. You see one of your ancestors standing in front of the Baptistry and holding the scarf. This will get you in the right frame of mind to enjoy your dressed up monument.

Step 4. Shake, shake, shake. And eccola!

Step 5. Enjoy!  You’ve got yourself a dressed up monument! A new masterpiece!  You have breathed new life into an old item.  Think of it as re-purposing on a grand scale.  What was old is new again.  You can see something old with new eyes.  Whatever saying floats your boat.

Step 6.  Stand back and look at your newly finished monument.

Be brave, because change can be hard…you can bet that not everybody will embrace it…

Step 7. Move all around your monument to see it from every imaginable angle…

And in every kind of weather condition…

You want to see it on sunny days…

See how it shines!

And on cloudy days:

And even in the rain:

Step 8. Look, look, look.  Looking can be hard work, but not when you have something this fun to gaze at. Look at your masterpiece at night:

And try to catch it with the moon in the sky…

Step 9.  Then, look at it again in the sunshine, because…

Now you see it…

And now you don’t.

Poof!  The cover is gone and you are back to your old monument.  But, now you will have a better appreciation for it.

Ha ha.  If you’re wondering what is up with all of this, it is very simple to explain.

Last June 17-20, for only 3 days, the iconic Baptistery in Florence was decorated with a reproduction of Pucci’s Battistero scarf, designed in 1957. Pucci’s scarf interprets an aerial view of Battistero San Giovanni in the brilliant hues of a Mediterranean landscape, using vibrant lemon yellow, orange, fuchsia and the emblematic Emilio pink. Never before had the Baptistery been so artistically reinterpreted, as it was for three days last June, in canvas printed with a Pucci design.

The Apse side of the Baptistery was clad in a scale reproduction of the original Battistero scarf design as a whole, having been reproduced and framed in large scale in its entirety.

The other seven sides of the octagonal building were covered in almost 2.000 square-meters of canvas, printed in a to-scale rendering of the famous Pucci design. Faithfully following the contours of the building, it was completely enveloped in rich and loud splashes of Pucci line and color.