Santa Maria Novella
Piazza di Santa Maria Novella
Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Closed Fridays and Sundays
Entrance fee € 2,70
The Church of Santa Maria Novella was built between 1279 and 1357 by Dominican monks. Architecturally, it is the most important Gothic church in Tuscany. The lower part of the marble facade, which is Romanesque in style, is believed to have been executed by Fra Jacopo Talenti, while the upper part was completed between 1456 and 1470 by Leon Battista Alberti.
Inside, the church is vast and looks even longer than it is thanks to the clever spacing of the columns. On the left-hand side is a fresco of the Trinità by Masaccio, one of the earliest paintings to demonstrate mastery of perspective. The Strozzi Chapel (left transept) is dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas and decorated with frescoes (1351-7) by Nardo di Cione depicting Paradiso e Inferno. Dante himself is represented in the Last Judgment just behind the altar. The Tornabuoni Chapel contains Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle of the life of St. John the Baptist (1485) in contemporary costume.
The Cappellone degli Spagnoli (Spanish Chapel) was used by the courtiers of Eleanor of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I. In the frescoes Triumph of the Doctrine by Andrea da Firenze, the dogs of God (a pun on the word Dominican - domini canes) are sent to round up lost sheep into the fold of the church.
