Basilica della Santissima Annunziata
A friar fell asleep mid-canvas in 1252 and woke to find the painting completed — a church grew around that single claim.
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The Gonzaga family of Mantua paid for a new tribune in 1444; Ludovico III insisted on Leon Battista Alberti, who redesigned it in 1469 and never saw it finished — construction ended in 1481, after his death. The entrance atrium, the Chiostrino dei Voti, once held around six hundred life-size wax effigies left by pilgrims, complete with horses. In 1786, every last one was melted down for candles.
What to look for
- Alberti's circular tribune: a domed space flanked by altar niches, its original geometry still readable beneath 17th-century Baroque plasterwork
- The Chiostrino dei Voti (built 1516) — the atrium made to house pilgrim wax figures, now empty, but its scale shows how large the cult once was
- The 1601 facade by Giovanni Battista Caccini, which deliberately copies the portico of Brunelleschi's Foundling Hospital directly across the piazza
On the northeastern side of Piazza Santissima Annunziata, near the city center; the Foundling Hospital is directly opposite.
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata is one of 38 sights worth the detour in Florence, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Florence pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Florence
- Michelangelo's DavidCarved for a cathedral roofline, then conscripted into politics — a 5.17-metre marble figure that became a republic's defiant face.
- Uffizi GalleryGiorgio Vasari built this as government offices in 1560; the Medici moved their art collection upstairs, and the last heiress gave it all to Florence under a formal family pact when the dynasty died out.
- Florence Cathedral (Duomo di Firenze)Brunelleschi's dome has been the largest masonry dome ever built since 1436 — and nothing has beaten it.
- Palazzo PittiA banker's act of one-upmanship that the Medici, Napoleon, and Italian kings all ended up calling home.
- Ponte VecchioThe only bridge in Florence spared from destruction during World War II — and it has been lined with shops since the Middle Ages.
- Palazzo VecchioFlorence's 1299 town hall was built on a Ghibelline rival's rubble — and the battlements were engineered to drop boiling liquid on anyone who showed up uninvited.