Whichever way you look at Florence, it is a beautiful city, but seen from the air Florence is downright spectacular. Unfortunately, only a lucky few can fly high in the sky above the city and admire the birthplace of the Renaissance with its many beautiful buildings in bird’s eye view.

Thanks to the Dutch photo artist Robbert Frank Hagens everyone can now enjoy the magnificent panorama of Florence seen from the air. On a beautiful day in July 2016, Robbert flew in a helicopter above Florence and took beautiful, crisp photographs of the city with his original panorama photo camera from the 1980s.

Earlier, he photographed a number of Dutch cities, including my hometown Rotterdam, and with Florence, Robbert went abroad for the first time to take aerial photographs. He explains why he has chosen especially for Florence: “Florence is the first Italian city that I have photographed. I hope to photograph other cities like Rome hereafter. To me, Florence will always be an impressive city with a tremendous history that comes to life in the panorama. I tried to capture the atmosphere of the city in the angle and the composition.”

The technique Robbert uses to create his panoramas deserves a special mention; in today’s modern, digital age, he deliberately chooses to make his shots with more than 30 years old camera. “I take the aerial photographs from the helicopter with a forgotten camera from the 1980s on slide film,” Robbert explains. “The beauty of this pre-digital era camera is that the slide film has an extremely high resolution, much higher than a digital camera. The detail, sharpness and color depth is also much higher. After the slide film has been developed and scanned, I edit the panorama in more than 20 layers of color to get the right result. Then I print them on canvas and dibond in my studio in sizes up to 3 meters wide. ”

There are five different panoramas available of Florence in the online shop of Panorama Art, each showing the city from a different, unique perspective. The high-quality panoramas are available in various sizes starting at a poster size to prints on canvas and dibond.