Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 04/06/2026 16:39:00

Tucked behind a deceptively bare facade on the southern bank of the Arno in Florence, the Basilica of Santo Spirito hides one of the most refined interiors of the Italian Renaissance. Designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and largely built after his death, the church was begun in the 1440s and completed in the 1480s, the architect last and arguably most complete work. Brunelleschi plan is a Latin cross with the curious feature of repeating the same simple module along the aisles and around the transepts, with semicircular chapels recessed into the outer walls in a continuous rhythm. The colonnade of slender grey pietra serena columns marches around the entire perimeter, giving the interior a serene mathematical clarity. The exterior was famously never decorated, and the bare stucco facade contributed by later builders has come to be seen almost as a statement in its own right, presenting the simple curtain wall of an Oltrarno church behind which the carefully proportioned interior is concealed. The chapels around the transepts hold a remarkable collection of fifteenth and sixteenth-century altarpieces, including works by Filippino Lippi, Cosimo Rosselli and Sandro Botticelli, and a great wooden crucifix that for many years was believed to be by the young Michelangelo, carved around 1493 as a gift for the monastery in thanks for hospitality, now displayed in the sacristy. The sacristy itself, an octagonal room with a vault by Giuliano da Sangallo, is one of the most beautifully detailed small interiors of the Florentine Renaissance, and its careful proportions repay slow looking even after the church has filled most visitors quota of architectural detail. The basilica stands on a busy square that fills with markets and outdoor cafes in the warmer months, giving the building a lively neighbourhood setting that contrasts with the calm of the interior, and the church remains one of the great hidden joys of the Oltrarno, a quietly perfect counterpoint to the more famous churches on the northern side of the river.