The golden vault
Full Byzantine mosaic around an eight-metre Christ in Judgement.
Zairon โ CC BY 4.0 ยท Ingo Mehling โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Ingo Mehling โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Ingo Mehling โ CC BY-SA 4.0
In 1401 the city held a contest for its north door; young Ghiberti beat Brunelleschi โ then spent half a century making two doors, until Michelangelo said the eastern pair deserved to be Paradise's gate, and the name stuck. The loser Brunelleschi went off and built the dome โ Florence won twice.
The doors are seen free from the square (as replicas) with originals in the museum โ but the interior's gold has no equal anywhere in Florence: five minutes under that vault justify the ticket.
First: oldest building, quickest visit, and its gold opens the story โ then cathedral, climb, and the museum last, where the originals wait.
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The Baptistery is the square's oldest building and the one Florentines hold holiest: a marble octagon predating the cathedral by centuries, where every child of Florence โ Dante, Michelangelo, all the Medici โ was baptised through the ages. For centuries the city believed it a converted Roman temple, and that proud belief shaped all Florentine architecture. The interior is a Byzantine surprise: a dome sheathed in thirteenth-century gold mosaic around an eight-metre Christ in Judgement, with hell scenes whose inventive demons Dante is said to have carried into the Divine Comedy. Its three bronze doors changed the history of art โ the eastern pair being the Gates of Paradise โ though what hangs today are faithful replicas, while the originals gleam in the Opera museum across the square.
Full Byzantine mosaic around an eight-metre Christ in Judgement.
The mosaic demons said to have seeded the Comedy.
The building Florence thought Roman, and built itself upon.
Piazza San Giovanni, 50122 Florence