Santa Croce
The pantheon of Florence: Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli rest here under Giotto's frescoes.
Michelangelo's Tomb • Giotto Frescoes • Leather School
Explore → Get Early Access🧭 Why Visit
The nave runs vast and honest under an open timber roof, Giotto's chapels glow at the far end, and behind the apse the historic leather school still teaches the trade. It is a church that is simultaneously a workshop, a museum, and the country's memory. Evenings, its piazza becomes the neighborhood's living room.
🏛️ A Little History
The Franciscans began it in 1294, reputedly on Arnolfo di Cambio's design; centuries of Florence's great families paid for chapels, and the city's great dead accumulated until Byron called it the Westminster of Italy.
💡 Did You Know?
Dante's grand tomb here is empty. Ravenna, where he died in exile, has kept the bones through seven centuries of Florentine requests. The 1966 flood submerged the basilica; Cimabue's drowned Crucifix became the disaster's symbol and the restoration movement's origin.
Buried Among the Great
Nearly three hundred tombs fill the floor and the aisles. Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Ghiberti are among them, which is why Byron called this the Westminster Abbey of Italy.
Altars, Stone and Glass
The Franciscans built wide and plain and then let six centuries of Florentine families decorate it.
Santa Croce in Winter
The square in front becomes a Christmas market in December, with the marble front lit behind it.
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