The treasures inside the Church of Santa Croce are good enough for a week of visiting if you drill a bit down.  If you intend to spend little more time in Florence you might want to split the visit of Santa Croce aside and save one extra day for a full visit at the Cloister next to the church and the treasure of treasures of the renaissance times:  the famous Pazzi Chapel or Cappella dei Pazzi.

The Cloister of Santa Croce

The cloister (but with substitutions and additions of the architectural elements over time) is located on the right side of the facade of the Basilica and introduces the Pazzi Chapel. It was originally composed of two distinct cloisters, one rectangular and one square. On the right side of the facade is a inner area where a series of cypress trees surround the statues of God the Father sitting by Baccio Bandinelli and the Warrior bronze by Henry Moore.

A series of ancient gardens correspond to the back of the church, full of trees (with some large specimens of hack-berry trees, cedars and the Himalayas are now areas of relevance of school Pestalozzi and Vittorio Veneto, the National Central Library of Florence and the Leather School.

Cappella dei Pazzi Santa Croce

 

The Pazzi Chapel is a masterpiece of Filippo Brunelleschi and the whole of Renaissance architecture, a fine example of spatial harmony achieved in all its structural and decorative elements.

The portico of the facade is attributed by some to the continuation of Giuliano da Sangallo , but others trace it back to the drawings of the master. The frieze with medallions and cherubs’ heads is by Desiderio da Settignano , while the vault is decorated with rosettes of round and Luca della Robbia , who also designed the bezel on the input , the wooden doors were carved in 1472 by Giuliano da Majano .

Inside, the plastic decoration is strictly subject to architecture, large medallions with the twelve Apostles , one of the best creations of Luca della Robbia , the frieze with the Cherubim and the Lamb and the other 4 rounds polychrome with the Evangelists , attributed to Andrea della Robbia or Brunelleschi himself who would take care of the design. The stained glass was created and designed by Alesso Baldovinetti .

Next to the chapel crypt of the Pazzi Chapel Castellani hosts the setting up of a permanent exhibition on the work of the engraver Pietro Parigi.

On the north side is a gallery of funerary monuments , especially the nineteenth century , who crowded the first cloister and were moved and reassembled here from 1964 to 1986 . The passage runs along the porch with a loggia on the north side , and it is paved on the floor and walls from funerary monuments . Among these are that the singer Virginia de Blasis Pampaloni of Louis (1839 ) , that Joseph Sabatelli of Ulisse Cambi (1844 ) and the musician John Pacini by Vincenzo Consani ( 1874).

 

The second cloister
Instead they remained in place on the entrance wall of the monuments by Girolamo Segato , the school of Lorenzo Bartolini , Florence Nightingale and the one to the patriot Giuseppe La Farina ( Michele Auteri Pomar , 1877) .

The second cloister score square with a central well , a work of great elegance of 1453 , attributed by some to Brunelleschi’s design , although it is more likely the intervention of Bernardo Rossellini . It is made ??entirely of stone, with round arches that support a lintel loggia on the first floor . The spandrels between the arches have a fine decoration in graffiti round and in relief, with coats of arms and businesses. The second cloister overlooking the Central National Library of Florence , which uses the rooms on the first floor on the south and east sides .