Basilica di Santa Croce
(Basilica of the Holy Cross)

Great Discoveries "Personal Tour Guides" will provide you with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit the Basilica di Santa Croce. Our carefully researched tour identifies and locates the most relevant treasures to ensure that you do not miss important works and that you clearly understand each items artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight, amuse and inform you, making your visit a most memorable experience. Learn about Santa Croce, the renowned burial place of many of Italy's most important citizens, and known as the Westminster Abbey of Florence. The bones of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and many other historic figures reside here. Santa Croce is also famous for the art it contains. Informative descriptions, photo's, building diagram, sample audio tracks and more.

The Basilica di Santa Croce is perhaps the most beautiful Gothic church in all of Italy. When one hears the word "Gothic," one often thinks of darkness and death with a vague sense of disdain for humanity. Things Gothic have carried that reputation since the Renaissance, when artists and architects actively sought to discredit the Gothic style inherited from their medieval past.

Contrary to the heavy and dark reputation of Gothic architecture, the Basilica of Santa Croce is actually light and airy, a unique blend of styles and thought. Though it is an exquisite representation of Gothic architecture, it also lays the foundation for those ideas on humanity that would reach fruition during the Renaissance. The sun filters through the many stained glass windows, playing multi-hued rays along one of the greatest repositories of Renaissance art and sculpture. The effect inspires peace and spiritual tranquility and Instead of disdain for humanity an incredible awe for human accomplishment and dignity takes root. Indeed, the city of Florence Italy, sensing the perfect peace granted by the Basilica, has buried many of her most famous sons and daughters here.

The spectacular interior is most famous for its art and its tombs. As a burial place, the church, known as the “Westminster Abbey” of Florence, contains more skeletons of Renaissance celebrities than any other church in Italy. During your visit you will step over 276 tombali slabs (tombstones) of the less well-known Florentines, while the top quality berths for the rich and famous, line the walls. Here you will find the monumental tombs and mortal remains of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Gioacchino Rossini, and Ugo Foscolo. Although exiled from Florence and buried in Ravenna, Dante, the great poet and father of the Italian language, is honored with a cenotaph. The tombs are grand with some realistic carvings of the great and the good in final repose.

Local lore claims that St Francis himself founded Santa Croce, but historic records indicate that the current church was not begun until 1294, several years after Saint Frances' death. The church was built by the Franciscans, an order based on a vow of poverty, but paid for by some of the wealthiest families in Florence.

The huge interior is built on the plan of a Greek cross with the interior divided into a central nave, two side aisles, a chancel and a transept that is full of chapels. The central nave is separated from the two side aisles by slender octagonal columns from which spring spacious pointed arches with a double molding. The elongated nave with a trussed timber ceiling leads to a vaulted polygonal apse with splendid frescoes. The original painted decoration on the timbers is still largely visible.

The walls of the chapels and the entire church were once covered in frescoes by Giotto and his students who turned the Basilica into a museum of art, the likes of which the world had never seen. Currently the most celebrated works in the church are Giotto's frescoes that are located in the Bardi and Peruzzi Chapels. They illustrate scenes from the life of St. Francis, the Legends of Saint John the Evangelist and those of Saint John the Baptist. Giotto and his disciples also designed many of the church’s wonderful luminous stained glass windows.

One cannot mistake the distinctive green and white facade of the church of Santa Croce for any other in Florence. The facade is actually a neo-gothic sham, which dates from as recently as 1863. The church had languished for centuries without a suitable front when someone claimed to have discovered the long-lost plans for the original facade. In truth, the scheme was nothing more than giant sized fraud. Oddly enough, an Englishman, Sir Francis Sloane, paid for construction of the facade.

The sandstone Gothic-style Campanile (bell tower) is also of rather recent design, completed in 1874 to replace an earlier tower that had been destroyed by lightning. Right at the apex of the pediment, in the center of the front facade, is a large Star of David, another odd anomaly of Santa Croce Basilica.

Listen to short 2 minute samples of our content. You can also click on the picture for an enlarged view.
Santa Croce Interior	Tomb of Michelangelo
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