The Franciscans started building the church of Santa Croce in 1294 to counter their great rivals, the Dominicans, who were erecting the Santa Maria Novella on the opposite side of town (now in front of the train station -- but closed during the time we were there). Santa Croce wasn't consecrated until 150 years later and it took nearly 600 years to get the white marble façade up. About 100 years after that (1966), the Florence flood dumped 10-15 feet of water and tons of mud inside. Despite all of that, the Church stands majestic at the end of its spacious square. Inside, it's the Westminster Abbey of Florence. Anyone who was anyone (with the exception of the Medici who had their own chapels) has his bones here, including a few Florence folks like Dante and Gallileo who the town jailed or exiled.
It may have taken a while to finish and later to restore after the flood, but Santa Croce was worth the wait. It is one of the few places in Florence that delights both inside and outside and is reasonably priced. (It's free except you have to dump coins into slots to get the lights to come on so you can see the frescoes. This isn't so bad when you figure you have to pay just to use bathrooms on this continent. Someday Italy will figure out how to charge tourists for air--and then their oxygen machines will be on the blink half the time.)
Enough whining (at least for a page or so).
Upon entering the church, one of the first tombs on the right is that of Michelangelo. The designer is Vasari, the architect/sculptor/ceiling painter that art historians don't much care for because, among other things, he was one of the first chroniclers of these artists. It's somewhat ironic that the Renaissance master has to spend eternity in a somewhat overdone tomb:
Not everyone buried here is from the Renaissance. Below is the tomb of Guglielmo Marconi who died in 1937. Since he is the father of the wireless, I thought I'd make a cellular phone call in his honor. Actually, this was a pose even though you can see all those vibrations coming out of me and probably giving me brain cancer -- explains a lot, doesn't it! The only time I used the phone all week was about an hour after this picture was taken to make a reservation at a guide book restaurant. We got there 15 minutes before it opened and the door was locked so I used my cell phone to book a table about 15 feet away. I'm sure that nearby, Marconi was rolling over in his grave.
Santa Croce is filled with some truly beautiful art, most of which did not photograph well since it was after dark when we arrived there. At the top of the page is a photo of the main sanctuary, filled with 14th century frescoes behind this cross:
The sanctuary is ringed with ten side altars including one with the famous Frescoes of the St. Francis Cycle by Giotto, the St. Francis expert of his day. Giotto, a key figure in the transition from Gothic to early Renaissance art, is thought to have done four of these chapels; apparently he was the delight of the rich Florentine families in the 14th century. (You may be aware that the Assisians have just reopened the church with frescoes attributed to Giotto after reassembling them from over 300,000 pieces after the 1997 earthquake).
Here's another of the ten back altars. As you can see, the uneven light made for poor photo quality and I had to scrap most of the pictures taken here.
We wandered through the rest of the church which contains beautiful chapels and sacristies (many of which were closed) and its own museum and cloisters (all closed). Eventually we found ourselves in a leather store. (Seems the cathedral had rented out space to a leather academy and this was their retail shop. The Santa Croce square is lined with leather outlets).
After a great dinner (thanks to Mr. Marconi), we wandered around a while trying to find our bus. Eventually we did, right in front of Santa Croce's Dominican rival all the way across town: St. Maria Novella, Soon we were home and up the next morning for our last full day in Florence. We started with short visits to three more churches. Please join us by clicking here.
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