Basilica di Santa Croce

The great Franciscan church on Piazza Santa Croce holds two of Florence's identities at once: a treasury of medieval and Renaissance painting, and the burial place the city chose for its greatest figures. Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli rest here, Giotto's frescoes glow again after restoration, and the monumental complex rewards half a day.

Why it matters

Franciscan roots run to the movement's beginnings — the operator's history records that Francis's first companions reached Florence as early as 1209, and the church was first mentioned when Francis was canonised in 1228. The building you see was begun on 3 May 1294, or 1295 by some accounts, to a design by Arnolfo di Cambio, the leading architect of the day, and was finished by the end of the fourteenth century though consecrated only in 1443 by Pope Eugene IV. Inside, the site of the city's great painting cycles meets its pantheon: Cosimo I de' Medici revived the tradition of honouring eminent citizens when he commissioned Michelangelo's tomb in 1564, and the nineteenth century broadened the claim from Florence's pantheon to that of the whole Italian nation. UNESCO lists Santa Croce among the monuments of the historic centre that carry the city's outstanding universal value.

What to notice

Start with the wide nave and the painted storytelling of the fourteenth-century chapels. The Bardi Chapel has just returned to view: after four years of study and conservation, the operator announces that Giotto's Stories of Saint Francis are once again fully visible — a rare chance to read the founder's life in the hand of the painter who redefined it. Look for the tombs that turned the church into a stage of memory: Leonardo Bruni and Carlo Marsuppini line the aisles with their humanist monuments, Michelangelo's tomb was designed by Giorgio Vasari and completed between 1564 and 1576, Galileo's monument — begun by his pupil Vincenzo Viviani's bequest — was finally resolved in 1737, and Machiavelli waited until 1787 for his. Antonio Canova carved the austere tomb of Vittorio Alfieri between 1804 and 1810. Donatello's Crucifix in Santa Croce, the wooden answer to Brunelleschi's in Santa Maria Novella, completes the comparison the two chapels invite. The Cappella dei Pazzi, the cloisters and the museum of the Opera di Santa Croce belong to the same monumental circuit.

Context and history

The basilica's afterlife is as telling as its foundation. In 1566 Cosimo I had Giorgio Vasari renovate the interior to Council of Trent standards: the medieval rood screen came down and fourteen new altars were installed, reshaping the space you see. The facade remained bare until 1865, when it was finished for the sixth centenary of Dante's birth; the church was raised to a basilica in 1933; and the 1966 flood inflicted grave damage from which conservation campaigns continue. The operator's themed programme — tombs and memorials, masterpieces, the Franciscans — reflects a complex that is part sanctuary, part civic memory machine, run by the Opera di Santa Croce with an archive whose records go back to the second half of the fourteenth century.