Act 2, Scene 14
Santa Croce

Firenze (Florence) is the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. You can feel it everywhere you go. Roma is a cacophony, civilization upon civilization screaming for your attention. By comparison, Firenze is a choir.

Santa Croce

The high ceiling shows its Gothic origins.

But Giotto painted frescoes inside, practically giving birth to the Renaissance around 1320. A couple hundred years later, Filippo Brunelleschi designed the Pazzi Chapel next door in the Renaissance style.

Santa Croce is lovely inside. The details aren't as mind-blowing as St. Peter's and the size isn't even as impressive as the Duomo across town, but the plainness of it is actually charming after so much overkill. As if that weren't enough, the likes of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo are entombed in the church.

I stopped by and cursed Michelangelo for making it so damned difficult to make art that can compare. (I visited both Raphael's and Donatello's crypts later in the trip and did the same and I'd have done Leonardo too, except he ran off to France to die.)

There is also an impressive tomb for Dante, but he died in Ravenna. The Florentines were never able to recover his body and I’m sure he’s just pleased as punch about it since the Florentines banished him while he was alive. In back is a leather school with high quality, and high priced, leather goods of all sorts.