Church
of Santa Croce: the monumental gothic church (1294) by Arnolfo
di Cambio is the largest Franciscan church in the world. Inside,
the works of Giotto and Donatello, and
the sepulcral monuments to Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Machiavelli.
In the closter of the convent stands the Pazzi Chapel, designed by Brunelleschi and masterpiece of Florentine Renaissance.
Bargello:
the Palace houses the National Museum. Public building of the Middle Age,
it was built as a rectangular fortress in 1255 and completed during the
300. First headquarters of the Captain of the People, it housed during
the centuries many public offices till the Captain of Justice known as
Bargello. Having become the National Museum in 1865, the Bargello is home
to a prestigious collection of sculptures and decorative arts of the medieval
and renaissance period. A mention has to be made at the collection of
the renassaince sculpture that makes the museum one of the most important
in the world. It is arranged on three floors with a pictoresque internal courtyard. Inside, the Room of Michelangelo, the bronzes by Benvenuto Cellini made for the Loggia in the Signoria Square and the sculptures by Gianbologna, the suggestive Room of Donatello which houses the celebrated David
Duomo
or Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore: the task of building the
Duomo, on the site of the old church S. Reparata, was entrusted to Arnolfo
di Cambio, in the year 1296. Following his death (1302), Giotto
was appointed to the supervise building work but he devoted himself mainly
to the Campanile. Later in 1357 Francesco Talenti and
Giovanni di Lapo Ghini continued work on the Duomo of
Florence enlarging the original Arnolfo's design. The construction of the 'Cupola' was really a problem due to such huge dimensions, which was solved by the genius of a florentine architect, Filippo Brunelleschi. In 1420 he started building the dome, on a revolutionary architectural scheme, and completed the work after sixteen years, when the Cathedral of Florence was consecrated and named Santa Maria del Fiore...
