Santa Maria Novella

This is the first great basilica you will see in Florence if you arrive by train: the station, a few steps away, is named after it. It was the church of the Dominicans, the preaching order, who began building it in the 13th century.

1A facade in two stages

Read the facade from the bottom up. The lower part, with pointed arches and tombs, is Gothic, from the 13th and 14th centuries. Around 1458 the wealthy merchant Giovanni Rucellai commissioned Leon Battista Alberti to finish it. Alberti kept what was there and added a classical order of mathematical proportions on top: a temple front with a pediment and two great scrolls linking the central nave to the side aisles. Those scrolls would be copied in churches all over Europe.

High on the frieze, the merchant left his signature in Latin: 'Iohanes Oricellarius Pau. F. An. Sal. MCCCCLXX', Giovanni Rucellai, son of Paolo, in the year of salvation 1470.

Look out too for the wind-filled sails, the Rucellai emblem, repeated along the marble band.

2Science and literature

On the facade are two astronomical instruments put up by the Dominican Ignazio Danti in the 1570s: an armillary sphere and a sundial. And it is here, inside this church, that Boccaccio's «Decameron» begins: in 1348, at the height of the plague, seven young women meet in Santa Maria Novella and decide to flee to the countryside and tell stories. Inside hangs Masaccio's Trinity, one of the first paintings built on rigorous perspective.

3What to look for

• The Rucellai sails on the facade.
• Danti's armillary sphere and sundial.
• The obelisks on tortoises in the square, the turning posts of an old chariot race.