Showing 1-18 of 18 results
-
Badia Fiorentina
This 10th-century abbey has had a few too many renovations over the years but is still worth visiting to see Filippino Lippi's Apparizione della Madonna a San Bernardo (Appearance of the Virgin to St Bernard), to the left as you enter through the small Renaissance cloister. The Romanesque bell tower got a mention from Dante.
-
Baptistery
The Romanesque Baptistery may have been built as early as the 5th century on the site of a Roman temple. It is one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The present facade dates from about the 11th century. It is said that the eighth side represents the (nonexistent) eighth day of the week, which symbolises birth, death and resurrection all in one.
-
Basilica di Santa Maria Novella
This Gothic church, completed by the Dominicans in the 14th century, contains a handful of important works including a seminal fresco by the young Masaccio, which incorporated the emerging values of painting, sculpture and architecture and which is a defining moment in the Renaissance.
-
Cappelle Medicee
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.
-
Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia
If you're in the neighbourhood, duck into this former convent for Andrea del Castagno's 15th-century fresco titled Ultima Cena (The Last Supper), found beneath coats of whitewash in the 19th century. He was one of the first artists to dabble with perspective.
-
Chiesa della Ss Annunziata
Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this church was established in 1250 by the founders of the Servite order and rebuilt by Michelozzo and others in the mid-15th century. In the ornate tabernacle, to your left as you enter the church from the atrium, is what is believed by the faithful to be a miraculous painting of the Virgin.
-
Chiesa di Ognissanti
This area was the old stomping ground of Amerigo Vespucci, and the young voyager is said to be pictured next to the Madonna in Ghirlandaio's fresco of the Madonna della Misericordia. Botticelli chips in with a fresco of St Augustine, while Ghirlandaio's masterful Ultima Cena (Last Supper) adorns the wall of the cenacolo (refectory).
-
Chiesa di Orsanmichele
This squat, 14th-century rectangle was originally a grain market but was deemed too good for the purpose and converted into a church. Most of the tabernacles on the exterior walls contain the original statues of the patron saints of Florence's various guilds, sculpted by the best 15th-century sculptors. Inside is a splendid 14th-century coloured-marble altar by Andrea Orcagna.
-
Chiesa di San Barnaba
It is no coincidence that this early-14th-century church lies on the corner of Via Guelfa, as it was built to celebrate a victory by the Florentine Guelphs over a Ghibelline (pro-Holy Roman Empire) army from Arezzo on 11 June 1289, the feast day of St Barnabus, to whose intercession Florence attributed victory. The entrance is topped by a ceramic Madonna col Bambino (Madonna and Child) by Giovanni della Robbia (added in the 16th century).
-
Chiesa di San Firenze
From as early as 1645, the Oratorian Fathers wanted to expand the small parish church of San Firenze. For the next century, architects and finances came and went, and the design continued to change. The original church, which stood on the right flank of the present building, was to have a chapel and convent added. In the end, a new church, dedicated to St Philip Neri, was built on the left flank and the San Firenze church was reduced to an oratory.
-
Advertisement
-
Chiesa di San Pancrazio & Museo Marino Marini
As early as the 9th century a church stood here. The shabby-looking version you see today is what remains of the original building from the 14th and 15th centuries. The church, deconsecrated in the 19th century, now houses the Museo Marino Marini. Donated to the city by the Pistoia-born sculptor Marino Marini (1901-80), the collection contains about 200 of the artist's works, including sculptures, portraits and drawings. The overwhelmingly recurring theme appears to be man and horse, or rather man on horse.
Read more about Chiesa di San Pancrazio & Museo Marino Marini
-
Chiesa di Sant'ambrogio
A rather dull 18th-century façade hides centuries of church history on this site. The first church here was raised in the 10th century, but what you see inside is a mix of 13th-century Gothic and 15th-century refurbishment. The name comes from the powerful 4th-century archbishop of Milan, Sant'Ambrogio (St Ambrose), who stayed in an earlier convent on this site when he visited Florence. The church is something of an artists' graveyard too.
-
Chiesa di Santa Felicita
The most captivating thing about the façade of this 18th-century remake of what had been Florence's oldest (4th-century) church is the fact that the Corridoio Vasariano passes right across it. The Medici could drop by and hear Mass without being seen!
-
Chiesa di Santa Margherita
Dante fans will like to know that it was in this tiny 11th-century church, in the poet's old stomping ground, that he is said to have first espied his muse, Beatrice Portinari. And it is here that he ended up marrying Gemma Donati, to whom he had been promised.
-
Chiesa di Santa Trinita
This church was built in the 13th century, rebuilt in the Gothic style and later graced with an uninviting mannerist façade; you can though get some idea of the Romanesque original from inside. Its most famous art is in the Cappella Sassetti, a cycle of Ghirlandaio frescoes depicting the life of St Francis of Assisi.
-
Chiesa e Convento di Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi
The main treat inside this former convent complex is not so much the church as what lies beyond it, a remarkable fresco of the crucifixion of Christ done by Pietro Il Perugino in 1493-96. The beauty and freshness of the colours are all the more amazing because they have never been touched by restorers.
Read more about Chiesa e Convento di Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi
-
Chiostro dello Scalzo
You'd never guess what's inside this modest cloister ( chiostro ) of a church long gone. Treat yourself to the sounds of silence (few tourists make it here) and admire the sepia frescoes on the life and death of John the Baptist carried out in stop-start fashion by Andrea del Sarto throughout the course of his career.
-
Sinagoga & Museo di Storia E Arte Ebraica
This late-19th-century synagogue is a fanciful structure with playful Moorish and even Byzantine elements. Although Florence was home to a Jewish community since at least the 14th century, serious discussion on the building of an appropriate temple only began around 1850, after the town authorities had definitively dropped all discriminatory regulations against the Jews.
-
Advertisement
Showing 1-18 of 18 results
