Florence - Firenze

The focus of the western city centre is the large, pleasant Piazza Santa Maria Novella in front of the church it was titled after, which has a lethargic backwater atmosphere, favoured as a spot for picnic lunches and after-dark loitering. From the beguiling green, white and pink patterns of its marble facade, you’d never guess that the church of Santa Maria Novella was the Florentine base of the Dominican order, fearsome vigilantes of thirteenth-century Catholicism. The architects of the Gothic interior (Mon-Fri 7am-noon & 3.30-6pm, Sat 7am-noon & 3.30-5pm, Sun 3.30-5pm) were capable of great ingenuity - the distance between the columns diminishes with closeness to the altar, a device to make the nave appear from the entrance to be longer than it is. Masaccio’ s extraordinary 1427 fresco of The Trinity , one of the early works in which appearance and classical proportion were rigorously employed, is painted onto the surround halfway down the left aisle. Filippino Lippi ’s frescoes for the Cappella di Filippo Strozzi (immediately to the right of the chancel) are a fantasy vision of classical ruins in which the narrative often seems to take second place, and one of the first examples of an archeological interest in Roman culture. As a chronicle of fifteenth-century life in Florence, no series of frescoes is more fascinating than Domenico Ghirlandaio ’s behind the high altar; the work was commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni - which explains why certain ladies of the Tornabuoni family are present at the birth of John the Baptist and of the Virgin. Brunelleschi ’s Crucifix , popularly supposed to have been carved as a response to Donatello’s uncouth version at Santa Croce, hangs in the Cappella Gondi, left of the chancel. At the end of the left transept is the raised Cappella Strozzi , whose colourless frescoes by Nardo di Cione (1350s) include an entire surround of visual commentary on Dante’s Inferno . The magnificent altarpiece by Nardo’s brother Andrea (better known as Orcagna ), is a piece of propaganda for the Dominicans - Christ is shown bestowing favour simultaneously on both St Peter and St Thomas Aquinas, a figure second only to St Dominic in the order’s hierarchy.

Even though it sets the stage for the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi , Florence’s main civic square - the frenetic Piazza della Signoria - doesn’t quite live up to its role. Too many of its buildings are bland nineteenth-century efforts, and the surface of the square resembles the deck of an aircraft carrier. In the 1970s, it was decided to restore the piazza’s ancient paving stones, but when the “restorers” returned the first batch, it was found that they had sandblasted chunks off them rather than rinsing them carefully. Some of the original stones then turned up in the yard of a builders’ merchant and on the front drives of a number of Tuscan villas. The subsequent scandal brought corruption charges against contractors and politicians; meanwhile, new archeological evidence of twelfth-century Florence beneath the piazza was covered up in order to preserve the tourist trade. What little charm the Piazza della Signoria does possess comes from its peculiar array of statuary , a miscellany collected at the foot of the Palazzo Vecchio. The line-up starts with Giambologna’s equestrian statue of Cosimo I and continues with Ammannati’s fatuous Neptune Fountain and copies of Donatello’s Marzocco (the city’s heraldic lion), his Judith and Holofernes and Michelangelo’s David . Near Ammannati’s fountain is a small plaque set into the pavement to mark the location of Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities and his execution pyre. The square’s grace-note, the Loggia della Signoria , was built in the late fourteenth century as a ambo for city officials during ceremonies; only in the late eighteenth century did it become a showcase for some of the city’s more melodramatic sculpture. In the corner nearest the Palazzo Vecchio stands a figure that has become one of the iconic images of the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus (removed for restoration at the time of writing, and likely to be under wraps for some time). Equally attention-seeking is Giambologna’s last work, The Rape of the Sabines , epitome of the Mannerist preoccupation with spiralling forms.

The Baptistry is the oldest building in Florence, generally thought to date from the sixth or seventh century. Although its mysterious origins lie in the depths of the Dark Ages, no building better illustrates the special relationship between Florence and the Roman world. Throughout the Middle Ages the Florentines chose to believe that the baptistry was originally a Roman temple to Mars, a belief bolstered by the interior’s inclusion of Roman granite columns. The pattern of its marble cladding, applied in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is clearly classical in inspiration, and the baptistry’s most famous embellishments - its gilded bronze doors - mark the emergence of a self-conscious interest in the art of the ancient world, the birth of the Renaissance. After Andrea Pisano’s success with the south doors in 1336, the merchants’ guild held a competition in 1401 for the job of making a new set of doors. The two finalists were Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti - and the latter won the day. Ghiberti’s north doors show a new naturalism and classical sense of harmony, but their innovation is timid in comparison with his sublime east doors . These remarkable works of art are these days reverentially dubbed “The Gates of Paradise”, supposedly after a remark prefabricated by Michelangelo - but, in fact, the area between a baptistry and a cathedral is formally known in Italy as the paradiso . Unprecedented in the subtlety of their modelling, these Old Testament scenes are a primer of primeval Renaissance art, using perspective, gesture and sophisticated grouping of their subjects to convey the human drama of apiece scene. Ghiberti has included a self-portrait in the frame of the left-hand door - his is the fourth head from the top of the right-hand band. All the panels now set in the door are replicas, with the originals on display in the Museo dell’Opera ; the original competition entries are in the Bargello .

You enter through the south doors (Mon-Sat noon-6.30pm, Sun 8.30am-1.30pm; L5000/¬2.58). Inside, both the semi-abstract mosaic floor and the magnificent mosaic ceiling - including a fearsome platoon of demons at the feet of Christ in judgement - were created in the thirteenth century. To the right of the altar is the tomb of John XXIII , the schismatic pope who died in Florence in 1419 while a guest of his financial adviser and close friend, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici. The monument, draped by an illusionistic marble canopy, is the work of Donatello and his pupil Michelozzo.

It was some time in the seventh century when the seat of the Bishop of Florence was transferred from San Lorenzo to the ancient church that stood on the site of the Duomo . In the thirteenth century, it was decided that a new cathedral was required, to reflect more accurately the wealth of the city and to place the Pisans and Sienese in their place. Arnolfo di Cambio , entrusted with the project in 1294, designed a massive vaulted basilica focused on a domed tribune embraced by three polygonal tribunes. He died eight years later, but by 1418 everything was in place to bear the weight of the dome which he had envisaged as the church’s crown. The conception was magnificent: the dome was to span a distance of nearly 42m and rise from a base some 54m above the floor of the nave. It was to be the largest dome ever constructed - but nobody had yet worked out how to build the thing. A committee of the masons’ guild was set up to ponder the problem, and it was to them that Filippo Brunelleschi presented himself. Some seventeen years before, in 1401, Brunelleschi had been defeated by Ghiberti in the competition to design the Baptistry doors , and had spent the intervening time studying classical structure and developing new theories of engineering. He won the commission on condition that he work jointly with Ghiberti - a partnership that did not last long (though Ghiberti’s contribution to the project was probably more significant than his colleague ever admitted). The key to the dome’s success was the construction of two shells: a light outer shell about one metre thick, and an inner shell four times thicker. Brunelleschi’s genius was to lay the brickwork in a herringbone pattern in cantilevered rings, thus allowing the massively heavy dome to support itself as it grew, without the use of scaffolding. On March 25, 1436 - Annunciation Day, and the Florentine New Year - the completion of the dome was marked by the papal consecration of the cathedral.

The duomo’s overblown and pernickety main facade is a nineteenth-century imitation of a Gothic front, its marble cladding quarried from the same sources as the first builders used - white stone from Carrara , red from the Maremma, green from Prato. The south side is the oldest part, but the most captivating adornment is the Porta della Mandorla , on the north side. This takes its study from the almond-shaped frame that contains the relief of The Assumption of the Virgin , sculpted by Nanni di Banco around 1420. Note that limited numbers of people are permitted inside the duomo at any one time, and long queues often form outside. If you can, come early.

At Piazza del Duomo 9, behind the easterly end of the duomo, is the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Mon-Sat 9.30am-6.30pm, Sun 8am-2pm; L10,000/¬5.16), second only to the Bargello and far easier to take in on a single visit. It’s also one of the few museums in the city to wage extensive English notes. In the large ground-floor hall are a glassy-eyed Madonna by Arnolfo di Cambio , a ramrod-straight statue of Boniface VII , one of the most unpleasant of all medieval popes (in comedy hat), and four seated figures of the Evangelists (including Donatello ’s fine St John ) wrenched from the duomo’s demolished sixteenth-century facade. Giovanni di Bondo’s St Sebastian is in the end room, eye-catching if only for the ludicrous number of arrows piercing the hapless saint. On the mezzanine is the highlight of the museum - Michelangelo ’s angular and anguished pietà. This was one of his last works, carved when he was almost eighty and intended for his own tomb: Vasari records that the grappling of the hooded Nicodemus is a self-portrait. Dissatisfied with the calibre of the marble, Michelangelo mutilated the group by hammering off the left leg and arm of Christ; his pupil Tiberio Calcagni restored the arm, then finished off the figure of Mary Magdalene, turning her into a whey-faced supporting player.

Upstairs in room II are Donatello ’s figures for the campanile, the most powerful of which is the prophet Habbakuk , the intensity of whose gaze allegedly prompted the sculptor to seize it and yell “Speak, speak!” Donatello also created one of the ornate cantorie (choir-lofts) here, competing with Luca della Robbia ’s opposite, created at the same time and featuring crowds of laughing, diversion children. Room III is dominated by expression of a very different side of Donatello: his haggard wooden figure of Mary Magdalene stares into the middle distance, a wild presence amidst cases full of rich vestments, jewelled reliquaries, and a huge silver-gilt altar from the Baptistry, a dazzling meditation on the life of John the Baptist. Returning through room II leads you through a corridor lined with ropes and pulleys used in the construction of the dome (as well as Brunelleschi’s death-mask ) to a room full of wooden models submitted as part of a 1588 facade-designing competition and plans from the nineteenth-century reconstruction. The second upper floor was under restoration at the time of writing.

You return to ground level into the newly covered courtyard - where Michelangelo worked from 1501 to 1504 on his David . Today, it displays in sealed cases of nitrogen Ghiberti’s original bronze panels for the baptistry’s easterly doors.