Cappelle Medicee

Lonely Planet review

It seems odd that the Medici chapels, built to balance the Brunelleschi sacristy on the other side of the church, have for organisational purposes been hived off from the church itself. Visitors enter from another point behind the church rather than from inside and thus have difficulty picturing how the chapels fit in with the rest of the complex.

You first enter a crypt. The stairs from this take you up to the Cappella dei Principi (Princes' Chapel). The so-called chapel is actually the triumphalist mausoleum of some of the Medici rulers. It is sumptuously decorated with various kinds of marble, granite and other stone, and there are decorative tableaux made from painstakingly chosen and cut pietre dure (semiprecious stones). It was for the purpose of decorating the chapel that Ferdinando I ordered the creation of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.

Statues of the grand men were supposed to be placed in the still-empty niches, but only the bronze of Ferdinando I and partly gilt bronze of Cosimo II were done. The chapel's unfinished state lends it a gloomy air. Had the remaining statues been created, the chapel would no doubt have all the grandeur of the great royal pantheons.