Badia Fiesolana

Before 1028 this was Fiesole's cathedral; today the Badia Fiesolana houses the European University Institute. Rebuilt in the fifteenth century with Medici patronage, its unfinished pietra serena facade and twelfth-century marble inlay survive at San Domenico, on the slope below the hilltown.

Why it matters

The Badia marks Fiesole's early history as a Christian centre: its first cathedral, dedicated to Saints Peter and Romulus, stood here until Bishop Jacopo il Bavaro moved the see within the walls in 1028. The church you see now is the fifteenth-century rebuilding funded by Cosimo il Vecchio de' Medici, with Brunelleschi and Michelozzo among the celebrated architects the Comune credits for the work. Since 1976 the complex has been the hub of the European University Institute, which makes it one of the rare Italian monuments where medieval, Renaissance and postwar European history occupy the same walls.

What to notice

The facade is an incomplete screen of pietra serena sandstone framing a central band of twelfth-century polychrome inlay, white marble against green serpentino, in the Florentine manner. The contrast marks the junction between the medieval front and the unfinished Renaissance project. Inside, the single hall with sixteenth-century side-altar chapels leads to a raised transept; the high altar of marble and hardstones was executed in 1612 by Giovanni Battista Cennini on a design by Pietro Tacca, and Bernardino Campi's Crucifixion hangs among the paintings. The monastery ranges once housed bishops, Camaldolese monks and Canons Regular; they now serve the European University Institute.

Context and history

After the see moved to the new cathedral in 1028, the site passed through reforming orders: rebuilt by Camaldolese monks and rededicated to Saint Bartholomew, it went to the Benedictines of Montecassino in the thirteenth century and from 1440 to the Augustinian Canons Regular known as the Roccettini, whose name survives in the street address. The fifteenth-century reconstruction under Cosimo il Vecchio was meant to house learned men and a library worthy of them. Later the building saw secular service: a hospice during the epidemic of 1520, Charles V's headquarters during the siege of Florence, then a bishops' summer residence, a printing works and housing, with the grand-ducal suppressions of 1778 ending monastic life until the diocese regained it in 1815. In the twentieth century the Italian state offered the complex to the new European University Institute, which opened it in 1976 as its main seat; the Fondazione Balducci keeps the archive of Ernesto Balducci, the Prato priest and writer, on the site.