The birthplace of the Renaissance and home of Michelangelo’s iconic statue of David, Florence is a jewel of the Italian region of Tuscany.

That’s where 2018 University of Alabama graduate Caty O’Connor was enjoying a mid-May stop on her European vacation, sandwiched between Rome and the French Riviera. Walking the famously confusing streets after exiting the Leather Market, O’Connor was looking for cover from incoming rain when her boyfriend, Brody Catherina, mouthed something curious from across the street.

“Nick … Saban.”

Pardon?

Non è possibile!

“This is super weird,” O’Connor thought standing on that corner a few thousand miles from Bryant-Denny Stadium.

So Catherina points over his shoulder and O’Connor spots “an older gentleman in a powder-blue outfit.”

With that, the dots were connected.

The light bulb was lit and it was instantly strobing crimson.

“I sprint across the street,” she said. “Sprint past my boyfriend and run right up to him and I immediately scream Roll Tide!”

Now back home in Denver, O’Connor admits she may have been somewhat aggressive in her approach.

“I startled the hell out of him,” she confessed in a phone interview with AL.com. “He’s like ‘What’s going on?’”

O’Connor’s encounter is one of a handful that made the rounds on social media last week in the ultimate slow-news cycle story that became a national headline. The famously-routine-oriented Crimson Tide coach broke the rotation of lake and beach house vacations and the internet was there for posterity’s sake.

Saban crossed the Atlantic to a foreign land where locals wouldn’t give the seven-time national champion a second glance but American tourists certainly did.

Longtime Sports Illustrated and ESPN sports columnist Rick Reilly was the first to share a photo of Saban walking the Spanish Steps in Rome.

“He looked good!” Reilly wrote on Twitter with a photo of Saban walking the 300-year-old steps in Rome.

Two days later, a caller to the Finebaum Show said her friend also saw Saban near the Spanish Steps and tweeted a photo of the encounter. A few more surfaced and in each snapshot, Saban was wearing something with an Alabama logo.

For O’Connor, that script-A on the baby blue quarter-zip was all the confirmation she needed in her frenetic encounter.

Visibly caught off guard, Saban quickly smiled and relaxed once O’Connor identified herself as an Alabama alumna.

“I’m frantically shaking at this point,” O’Connor recalls as she had her picture taken with Saban.

The whole thing lasted 30-45 seconds tops.

“I blacked out the whole time,” O’Connor said.

And it’s somewhat fitting — Italian location aside — she had a moment to meet Saban because he’s a big reason O’Connor even stepped foot in Alabama. A Minnesota native, O’Connor is counted among the thousands of out-of-state students who made the at-least partially-party-induced pilgrimage to Tuscaloosa.

“I landed at Alabama because I wanted the big football school … I was in Greek life, O’Connor said. “I wanted that movie-esque college experience.”

That she got as Alabama won two of Saban’s national titles before she graduated in the same ceremony as Jalen Hurts.

A lot’s been said and written about the explosion of out-of-staters seeking that glamorized vision of the SEC experience. In-state students were first outnumbered in 2014 and made up only 42.1% of the 38,645 enrollees in the fall of 2022.

Anyway, O’Connor still can’t believe her dream vacation intersected with the Sabans deep in the nearly-2,000-year-old city. Looking back, she was surprised they spotted him on such a busy street even outside of the touristy area but, in a country known for fashion, wardrobe played a factor.

“But, I mean, all Europeans are wearing neutrals and there’s a man in a powder-blue Alabama Crimson Tide get up,” O’Connor said. “So it was easy to spot him after that.”

After apologizing for the interruption but still beaming from the encounter, O’Connor returned to Earth and resumed the trip with her boyfriend. Catherina, a UC-Santa Barbara grad told his girlfriend he wanted to buy some Crimson Tide gear after the chance encounter so Saban keeps selling.

And for the Minnesotan drawn south by the football machine Saban resurrected, she walked away from the Florence street corner with a sense of dizzied satisfaction. After all, she’s seen volcanic Saban erupt on the sidelines and conversing with reporters he likened to rodent toxin.

But on that Tuscan afternoon on an out-of-the-way street corner halfway around the globe, his rarely-rediscovered anonymity was blown thanks to an eagle-eyed boyfriend and a powder-blue logo.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.