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Santo Spirito

Brunelleschi's last church and the liveliest piazza on the left bank: morning market, evening aperitivo.

Brunelleschi's last church • the Oltrarno's own piazza • free to enter

Visit Santo Spirito Get Early Access
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Piazza Santo Spirito

Oltrarno, ten minutes from Ponte Vecchio

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Free to Enter

The church costs nothing. The sacristy and cloisters are ticketed

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Closed Wednesdays

And it shuts at midday, so mornings or late afternoons

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The Piazza Turns

Market until lunch, aperitivo from seven

🧭 Why Visit

Brunelleschi's last church behind Florence's most honest piazza. Morning market, evening aperitivo, and an interior of pure Renaissance mathematics that architects cross oceans to stand in. The neighborhood is the exhibit.

🏛️ A Little History

Designed in 1434 and finished after Brunelleschi's death, the church anchors the Oltrarno's community life; its Augustinian convent once sheltered a teenage Michelangelo, who thanked the prior with a wooden crucifix that hangs in the sacristy.

💡 Did You Know?

The famously blank façade has been 'temporarily' unfinished for five centuries. Projected artworks light it up during festivals, which is as complete as the neighborhood wants it. The piazza's morning market has run essentially forever; the flea market adds antiques on the second Sunday.

PLAIN IN FRONT, MEDIEVAL BEHIND

The Piazza and the Facade

The front of Santo Spirito is blank render and nobody agrees whether that was the intention or the money running out. Walk round the flank and the older church is still there in rough stone.

Piazza Santo Spirito with its fountain and plane trees, the church closing the far end of the square.
The squareThe square runs down to the church, with the fountain about halfway along.
The plain facade of Santo Spirito with the campanile and the older stone flank alongside, a yellow banner hanging on it.
The plain frontThe facade is plain and late. The older stone flank beside it is what the front hides.
A tall Gothic window in the rough stone flank of the church, the campanile above and a yellow banner beside it.
What the front hidesThe flank keeps the medieval church. The great window and the rough stone belong to the fabric the smooth facade covers.
SIX HUNDRED BURIALS

The Chiostro dei Morti

The first cloister takes its name from the tomb slabs covering its walls. The painted lunettes above them are a seventeenth century Augustinian cycle and most of them have faded back into the plaster.

A vaulted cloister walk lined with memorial tablets, dappled light on the floor and the garden through the arcade.
The walkThe cloister walls are covered with memorial tablets, and the light comes through the arcade in patches.
A large tree filling a cloister garden, seen through an arch of the surrounding arcade.
One treeOne big tree fills the cloister garden, seen from under the arcade.
A cloister wall covered with memorial tablets under a row of faded painted lunettes, a bench below.
Floor to archTablets from floor to arch, under lunettes that have mostly faded back into the plaster.
A faded painted lunette above a cloister wall of memorial tablets, figures grouped around a seated figure.
One lunetteOne of the lunettes, faded but still readable close to.
SEVENTY SQUARE METRES, THREE SUPPERS

The Refettorio Nuovo

The new refectory was built in 1594 between the two cloisters. Bernardino Poccetti frescoed the end wall in 1597 with three suppers running in sequence, the Wedding at Cana, the Last Supper and Emmaus, and the room was later cut down in size to protect them.

One of three painted suppers filling a refectory wall, servers carrying dishes to a long table under painted architecture.
One of threeThe wall of the new refectory carries three suppers in sequence, painted by Bernardino Poccetti: the Wedding at Cana, the Last Supper and Supper at Emmaus. This is one of them.
A painted supper close, servers in doublets and hose crowding behind the table, a cat and a dog below.
Doublets, a cat, a dogClose to, the servers wear doublets and hose, and there is a cat and a dog under the table.
A painted Christ on the cross, the surrounding plaster lost in patches around the figure.
A painted ChristA painted Christ, with the plaster around him lost in patches.
An antique framed map of Tuscany hanging above dark wooden panelling.
A map of TuscanyAn antique map of Tuscany hangs above the panelling.
GREY STONE AND NOTHING ELSE

Inside the Basilica

Brunelleschi's plan is a colonnade of pietra serena and very little else, and it reads best from the west end where the columns line up. These four are all made from that one spot inside the door.

The nave of Santo Spirito from the west end, grey stone columns receding under a coffered ceiling.
Down the middleThe nave from the west end, looking down the colonnade to the altar.
The coffered ceiling of the nave seen straight up, the arcades running away beneath it on both sides.
Straight upThe coffered ceiling, straight up.
The high altar of Santo Spirito under its domed canopy, benches in the crossing before it.
The altarThe high altar under its canopy.
The nave seen from inside the side aisle, columns framing the view down to the altar.
From the aisleFrom inside the aisle the columns close up and the nave reads as a corridor of stone.

Live Prices & Availability

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  • It closes over lunch and all day Wednesday. That catches more visitors out than anything else in Florence.
  • Stand in the centre aisle at the west end. The whole point of the church is the view down the colonnade.
  • Michelangelo's wooden crucifix is in the sacristy, which is a separate small ticket. Worth it.

  • The morning market is small, local and mostly produce. It is not a tourist market and it packs up by two.
  • From about seven the steps of the church become the piazza's seating. That is the neighbourhood at its best.
  • The facade has been blank for five centuries. Locals have voted down every proposal to finish it.

  • Santa Maria del Carmine and the Brancacci Chapel are five minutes west.
  • Keep going into San Frediano for the trattorias the guidebooks are slower to find.
  • The streets between here and the river are where the workshops still are.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes the interior special?
It is Brunelleschi's last design and the purest thing he did. Thirty-five identical chapels ring a nave built on a single repeating module, so the whole church is one proportion multiplied. Architects come a long way to stand in it.
Why is the front blank?
It was never finished, and after five hundred years the neighbourhood has decided it likes it that way. Every completion proposal has been rejected.
Is the Michelangelo crucifix really his?
The wooden crucifix in the sacristy is generally accepted as his, carved at about seventeen for the prior who let him study anatomy on the convent's dead. It is small, pale and very unlike the Michelangelo most people expect.
Is the piazza safe at night?
It is busy and social rather than rowdy, and it is one of the few squares in Florence where the crowd is mostly local. Ordinary city caution applies and nothing more.

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Battistero di San Giovanni

Florence's oldest building: golden mosaics overhead, and the bronze doors Michelangelo called the Gates of Paradise.

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The Oltrarno

Florence's left bank: artisan workshops, Santo Spirito's piazza life, and the city as Florentines live it.

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