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(see The Duomo Group, Florence).

Gothic pantheon of cultural heroes, containing the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini and Galileo (reburied here in 1737). Giotto frescoed the two chapels to the right of the altar. Through the sacristy is a renowned leather shop.

Among the masterpieces here are Masaccio’s Trinità (1428; painting’s first use of perspective), Giotto’s Crucifix , Filippino Lippi’s Cappella Strozzi frescoes (1486) and Ghirlandaio’s decorous sanctuary frescoes (1485). The cloisters’ greenish Noah frescoes (1446) are warped perspectives by Paolo Uccello.

San Lorenzo was the Medici parish church. The family tombs are decorated by Donatello, Rosso Fiorentino, Bronzino and Filippo Lippi, with architecture by Brunelleschi (interior and Old Sacristy) and Michelangelo (Laurentian Library and New Sacristy). The New Sacristy contains Michelangelo’s roughly finished Dawn, Dusk, Day and Night .

Brunelleschi’s influential masterpiece of Renaissance design. The building’s proportions are picked out in clean lines of pietra serena stone against white plaster. Seek out altarpieces by Filippino Lippi (Madonna and Child with Saints , 1466) and Verrocchio (a minimalist St Monica and Augustinian Nuns ).

Masolino started the Brancacci Chapel’s frescoes of St Peter’s life in 1424. Another of his works, Adam and Eve , is rather sweet compared to the powerful Expulsion from the Garden by his successor, Masaccio. Filippino Lippi completed the cycle in 1485.

This is Florence’s only Romanesque church, its green and white façade perched high above the city. The doors of Michelozzo’s tabernacle were painted by Agnolo Gaddi (1394–6).

Granary-turned-church ringed with statues by Donatello, Ghiberti and Verrocchio (copies; the originals are in an upstairs museum). Orcagna designed the tabernacle to resemble a miniature cathedral containing a Madonna and Child (1348) by Bernardo Daddi.

Buontalenti provided the façade, while Ghirlandaio frescoed the Cappella Sasetti with the Life of St Francis set in 15th-century Florence.

The Michelozzo-designed entry cloister was frescoed by Mannerists Andrea del Sarto, Rosso and Pontormo. The Baroque, octagonal tribune is decorated with Perugino’s Madonna and Saints and Bronzino’s Resurrection . Sculptures by Giambologna festoon his tomb in the back chapel.