Glories of Firenze, hidden & otherwise…

The Duomo, whose official name is the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, has always been most beautiful to me by night.  The green, pink and white of the marble façade comes to life in the moonlight.

While the Duomo is beautiful, I always find myself straying to the Basilica di Santa Croce during the day.  The crowds are less dense, and the interior of the church is much more interesting to me.  Plus, you have the tombs of the greatest collection of minds in one place.  For a good reason is it often called the Temple of the Italian Glories.  And who might we find there?

Dante Alighieri

Michelangelo  Buonarroti

Gioachino Antonio Rossini

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

Galileo Galilei

Some tombs hold the actual remains, while others are funerary monuments.  Other luminaries represented in Santa Croce include:

Leon Battista Alberti (15th-century architect and artistic theorist)
Vittorio Alfieri (18th-century poet and dramatist)
Eugenio Barsanti (co-inventor of the internal combustion engine)
Lorenzo Bartolini (19th-century sculptor)
Julie Clary, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and their daughter Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte
Leonardo Da Vinci (commemorative plaque, buried in Château d’Amboise in France)
Leonardo Bruni (15th-century chancellor of the Republic, scholar and historian)
Ugo Foscolo (19th-century poet)
Giovanni Gentile (20th-century philosopher)
Lorenzo Ghiberti (artist and bronze-smith)
Carlo Marsuppini (15th-century chancellor of the Republic of Florence)
Raffaello Morghen (19th-century engraver)
Louise of Stolberg-Gedern (wife of Charles Edward Stuart, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’)
Guglielmo Marconi (buried in his birthplace at Sasso Marconi, near Bologna)
Enrico Fermi (nuclear physicist, buried in Chicago, Illinois)

In 1966, Santa Croce was submerged to a depth of 22 ft. by a flood of the Arno River, and hundreds of artworks were damaged.  50+ years later, restoration work is still taking place here.  In many ways, the flood gave birth to the science of art restoration that we know today.