Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Rossini are here. Dante is not — he died in exile in Ravenna and Ravenna has never given him back — but there is an empty tomb for him anyway, and a large statue of him outside.
The Giotto frescoes in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels are the reason art historians come. Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel, off the cloister, is one of the purest pieces of Renaissance architecture anywhere: pietra serena lines on white plaster, and nothing else.
The square in front was the worst-hit part of the city in the 1966 flood; a marker on the wall shows how high the water came.
⚠️ It is a big site — church, chapels, cloisters, museum and leather school. Allow more time than you think.
Santa Croce in pictures
