Pazzi Chapel
A family second only to the Medici in wealth built this during wartime — their claim on Florence, argued in stone and geometry.
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Brunelleschi drew the plan around two pure forms — the square and the circle — but scholars now credit the actual construction to Giuliano da Maiano or Michelozzo. Funded in 1429, finished in 1478, it served as a chapter house and classroom for monks, with burial rights behind the altar reserved for the Pazzi family. The authorship dispute makes every surface worth reading carefully.
What to look for
- The geometric proportions: every element derived from the square and the circle, visible in the floor plan and dome
- The porch added to the façade — which partially obscures the original front Brunelleschi began, leaving only the lower register still visible.
- The chapel behind the altar — the private space where the Pazzi family held the right to bury their dead
Enter through the first cloister on the southern flank of the Basilica di Santa Croce; the chapel sits inside the basilica complex.
Pazzi Chapel 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.