The inside is far barer than the outside leads you to expect, and that is the point: the decoration went onto the skin of the building and into the dome overhead. The vault above the crossing carries Vasari and Zuccari's Last Judgement, which you can stand under for nothing.
The marble front is nineteenth-century. The cathedral spent most of its life with a bare brick facade; the present one was completed in 1887 in the same three Tuscan marbles as the flanks — white Carrara, green Prato, red Maremma.
Brunelleschi is buried in the crypt, underneath the floor, along with the excavated remains of Santa Reparata, the older church the cathedral was built over.
⭐ Free, and consistently the least crowded part of the complex in the middle of the afternoon.
Florence Cathedral in pictures
