How many undergraduates can say that they have leafed through a five-hundred-year-old music manuscript? The Music History class in the “Renaissance Then and Now” program did just this when they visited an exclusive study room at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze – one of Italy’s most notable libraries – and examined the very pages of music that Renaissance performers had used. Included among the books was the “Banco Rari 229”, a manuscript featuring many exquisite illuminated initials and pages with music painted in gold leaf against a strikingly deep blue background. Our students were enthusiastic about their visit claiming, for lack of a better term, that it was “simply awesome”.