Basilica of Santa Croce
The floor holds Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli — Florence's dead are more famous than most cities' living.
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The world's largest Franciscan church serves as Italy's secular pantheon. Sixteen chapels line the nave, several frescoed by Giotto, and the tombs of Renaissance giants are set directly into the floor and walls. The floor plan itself is a Tau cross — 115 metres long — a deliberate symbol of St Francis.
What to look for
- The fresco cycle in the Bardi Chapel — depicting the life of St Francis, it was plastered over on Cosimo I's orders and damaged further when Vasari installed new altars against the walls
- The Cappella dei Pazzi in the main cloister, Brunelleschi's chapter house completed in the 1470s, kept deliberately plain
- The octagonal columns dividing nave from aisles — follow them to read the Tau-cross floor plan the Franciscans required
On Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres southeast of the Duomo; entrance faces the square.
Basilica of Santa Croce 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.