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

The Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce, standing on a vast piazza on the eastern side of the historic centre of Florence, is often called the Temple of the Italian Glories because of the great Italians buried within its walls. Begun in 1294 to designs traditionally attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio, it is the largest Franciscan church in the world. Within the nave and the side chapels lie the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Niccolo Machiavelli, the composer Gioachino Rossini, the poet Ugo Foscolo and many other figures of Italian intellectual and artistic history. An empty cenotaph honours Dante Alighieri, whose body remains in Ravenna where he died in exile. The basilica is also one of the great surviving showcases of the Florentine fresco tradition. The Bardi and Peruzzi chapels at the eastern end carry cycles by Giotto from the early fourteenth century, including the Life of Saint Francis and scenes from the lives of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, foundational works of western painting. Beside the main church, the Pazzi Chapel, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in the 1440s, is one of the purest small spaces of the early Renaissance, with its grey pietra serena pilasters set against pale walls, dome with twelve glazed terracotta roundels of the apostles by Luca della Robbia and crisp geometric proportions. The cloisters of the convent house the Museum of the Opera di Santa Croce, with sculptures, frescoes and liturgical objects detached from the church for conservation. The vast Crucifix by Cimabue, badly damaged in the 1966 Arno flood and painstakingly restored, has come to symbolise the resilience of Florence damaged cultural heritage. The huge open square in front of the basilica, the Piazza Santa Croce, has hosted everything from medieval jousts to the traditional calcio storico, a rough sixteenth-century form of football played in Renaissance costume each June, and the church and its setting together make for one of the most rewarding stops on any tour of Florence.