We spent seven days in Rome last week and were alarmed by the crowds, the worst we had seen there. We were concerned/convinced that the half-day we had planned in Florence, here at the end of our Italy visit, would be an even-more taxing experience.

Florence is Ground Zero of global tourism, which pretty much was invented there 200 years ago — when young English gentlemen would do a tour of Western civilization, and it invariably included a long stop in Florence, the heart of the Renaissance.

Since then, the place has been overrun by tourists. (Especially, the past 20-30 years, by young Americans.)

But, today, we managed to see all sorts of marvelous works in Florence, nearly untroubled by fellow tourists, and walking directly into the places we targeted, and getting unobstructed views of statues in the Piazza della Signore.

How did this happen?

We didn’t actually have a plan. It was 90 percent happenstance.

It hinged on these factors: a surprisingly cold and rainy Saturday afternoon that drove most people indoors; starting our tour at 4 p.m.; and having a supremely knowledgeable guide.

We had hoped/planned to be in Florence by 2. But the drive from Gaeta, in the south, to Florence, in Tuscany, is more than 400 kilometers (nearly 250 miles) and began at about 10:30 a.m. and included a long stretch from Gaeta on minor roads before we could get the big and fast A1 autostrada.

And then rain. It was a cool and wet day, the wettest of our time here, and a weather pattern unusual in Italy this late in the year. (It snowed today in the north of the country; Italy was shocked.)

So, we fought our way into the soggy center of Florence at about 3:30, and somehow made our way to the Santa Maria Novella train station, which I knew was near the hotel (Kursaal and Ausonia) run by Paola’s family. She is an old friend who is an excellent guide and authority on Florence art and history. (Her website: guidedflorencetours.com)

We hustled inside, checked in, dropped the bags, and the three of us went outside at 4. It was about 50 Fahrenheit, and we were carrying umbrellas, and the streets were nearly deserted. A Florence we had never seen.

We had an idea of at least 3-4 pieces/places we hoped to see, “inspired” again (I am embarrassed to say) by Dan Brown, whose new book, Inferno, went on sale on May 14 and is, mostly, based in Florence. A book we read while on this vacation.

First, we marched straight down to the Duomo–Baptistry–Campanile complex, barely a 10-minute walk from Paola’s hotel, and were inside the Baptistry in three minutes, or the time it took us to walk across the street and buy two 5-euro tickets.

Neither of us had been in the octagonal building before, accidents of renovations and poor planning. The Baptistry is made of the same striking, white/pink/green marble as are the Duomo and Campanile, nearby, and is the oldest of the three memorable structures.

Amazing stuff. The doors are worth an hour each, and the inside is almost overwhelming, with all the things going on on the ceiling and walls — Including the Byzantine and Arabic inspiration for parts of the building — and Paola answered every question we had, and put concepts in context. And we, in turn, showed her the baptismal font behind which Dan Brown’s characters briefly hid after finding the death mask of Dante.

(Read the book; it’s the same Dan Brown formula of great pacing, good concept, intricate plotting, preachiness and abysmal writing.)

We moved down to the “Dante” church, where the woman he had a lasting crush on is entombed, a small, easy-to-miss place, (which Paola dismissed as a sort of chamber of commerce invention to lure tourists), then marched down to the Palazzo Vecchio.

We hoped to do the “secret passageways” tour, at the former seat of Florence’s republic, but they were finished for the day with those. Instead, Paola pointed out the places in the building where the passages ran, behind the walls, and showed us the small, street-level exit in the south side of the building known as the “Duke of Athens door” — an outlet onto the street if things got rough.

We then got some illumination on two of the enormous statues just outside the palace. Not Michelangelo’s David, a copy of which is on the piazza, but to Perseus with the Head of Medusa, a bronze sculpture a few feet from David.

Paola showed how Perseus, from the front, looks like a slight young man, almost a petulant boy, whose expression seems to be telling us that he has completed an unpleasant but required task.

Going around to the back of the bronze, however, we see the back of a heavily muscled man, and a second, bearded “face” worked into back of the boy’s head. Paola suggested the sculptor, Cellini, decided to bring added meaning to a piece he might have known would be displayed only a few feet from Michelangelo’s feted David.

A few feet away, the Rape of the Sabine Women is represented, in a work by Giambologna. Paolo had us view the sculpture from three perspectives, one which seemed to affirm our sense of violence that the name of the statue would imply, and then working around to the right side of the statue, which appears to be a gentle rescue.

The point being, that many of the masterpieces are often far more complicated than our cursory inspections would suggest, the sort of thing you do not notice without a guide.

After, she took us down to the lawn on the north side of the Arno River (in photo, above), just to the east of the Ponte Vecchio. And as we lounged in chairs, the sun momentarily broke through the clouds and illuminated the bridge. It was quite a nice moment.

It was a breath-taking two hours. We did not do the whole of the city; that takes a lifetime of study, as Paola has given. But she showed us several important pieces of architecture and art, and talked us through it, and showed us how, and her expertise made the viewings memorable, and the lack of tourists, chased out by the weather and probably pooped at the end of a long day, made it seem  like we were one of a handful of people looking at some of the city’s finest works.

Did not see that coming.

We had tea at Paola’s home, and dinner with her husband and children, and it was all quite nice, and nearly all we could do in return, other than thank her and them, was suggest that she might consider preparing a Florence version of the “Dan Brown tour” that likely will be avidly followed by his biggest fans — and soon.

And we presented her a copy, in Italian, of “Inferno” … so she could cringe through it, and explode a few myths the author no doubt has promulgated.