The great tombs
Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli under one floor โ and Dante's empty one.
Rhododendrites โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Dllu โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Benjamin Smith โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Bernard Gagnon โ CC0
Florence exiled its greatest poet; he died in Ravenna in 1321 โ and when repentant Florence begged for his bones, century after century, Ravenna refused and still does: you cast him out alive, you shall not have him dead. So Florence built the empty monument that reproaches it daily.
Galileo died condemned in 1642 and was buried near-secretly in a side room here โ for almost a century, until the storm faded and in 1737 he was moved to his grand monument facing Michelangelo's: a late apology carved in marble.
Its quarter is the true artisan district: the historic Leather School opens off the church's own cloister with the craft live before you, and streets like Via de' Neri feed you honestly Florentine, far from the piazza's tourist menus.
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Santa Croce is the Pantheon of Italy: the largest Franciscan church in the world, its floor and walls holding the nation's great โ Michelangelo under a tomb designed by Vasari; Galileo, whose body waited decades for honoured burial; Machiavelli and Rossini; and Dante's cenotaph, empty forever because he died exiled in Ravenna โ a standing reproach in marble. Before the tombs it was already great: its eastern chapels carry the Giotto frescoes that taught Italian painting to tell stories, and the Pazzi Chapel in its cloister is Brunelleschi at his purest โ early Renaissance architecture complete. Here too hangs Cimabue's crucifix, shattered by the great flood of 1966 and part-restored โ the icon of Florence's wound, and of the night the world waded in to pull its art from the mud.
Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli under one floor โ and Dante's empty one.
Bardi and Peruzzi โ the moment Italian painting learned narrative.
Brunelleschi distilled โ the Renaissance space at its purest.
Wounded Cimabue โ memory of 1966 and the Mud Angels who saved Florence.
Piazza di Santa Croce 16, 50122 Florence