BASILICA OF SANTA CROCE

The Basilica of Santa Croce is the main Franciscan church of Florence and is thought to be the most beautiful Italian gothic church. The construction of the church was begun in 1295 from architect Arnolfo di Cambio and it was completed in 1442. The inside of the church, is airy and spacious, to three aisles, the main nave is 19 meters wide and has a wooden ceiling. The facade of the Basilica was added in 19th century and is decorated with marbles of various colors disposed to compose geometric designs with beautiful effects. The Basilica is famous also because it keeps numerous graves of illustrious men, in fact along its walls are graves and funeral monuments, while on the pavement are 276 grave stones. Between the graves are those of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Galileo Galilei, Ugo Foscolo, Niccolò Machiavelli, Gioacchino Rossini, Leon Battista Alberti, Vittorio Alfieri, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Carlo Marsuppini and Vittorio Fossombroni. Santa Croce has also important masterpieces of Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Giorgio Vasari, Donatello, Bernardo Rossellino, Andrea della Robbia and modern artists as Libero Andreotti, Antonio Berti, Pietro Parigi. The chapels are decorated from works of art of Giotto and della Robbia, while Brunelleschi projected the cloisters. In the cloister beside the church is found the de' Pazzi chapel, work of Filippo Brunelleschi, one of the masterpiece of the architecture of the renaissance. The Museum dell’Opera di Santa Croce accommodates a crucifix of Cimabue, now partially restored after the serious damages endured during the flood of 1966 

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