Badia Fiorentina

Nestled just off Piazza San Firenze, the Badia Fiorentina (usually considered one of oldest churches in Florence) dates its origins back to 978. Around the corner from Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi, directly across via del Proconsolo from the Bargello, the abbey's unassuming entryways (one on via del Proconsolo, and one on via Dante Alighieri) "hide" the church from the street (the part of the church visible from via del Proconsolo has no windows and a row of retail stores at street level - a longstanding leather goods shop is one of them). Hidden inside you will find: a Gothic interior, a Renaissance altarpiece, and a cloister most visitors never see. Its slender campanile is one of the tallest and most recognizable bell towers on the Florentine skyline. The Badia Fiorentina is truly a hidden gem, right in the center of Florence!

History

The Badia was founded in 978 by Willa, Countess of Tuscany, who dedicated it to the Virgin Mary in memory of her husband, Hubert. Willa's son Ugo, who became Margrave of Tuscany, expanded the abbey's holdings and endowments. Ugo is still honored every December 21 with a solemn Mass at the Badia - a tradition maintained for roughly a thousand years and attended, to this day, by the sitting president of the Florence city council carrying the city's ceremonial gonfalone. Dante Alighieri praised Ugo as the "great Baron" in the Paradiso, and Ugo's marble tomb, carved by Mino da Fiesole, still stands inside the church.

The Badia also holds a place in Florentine literary lore as the traditional site where Dante first saw Beatrice Portinari during Mass - a legend that has never been documented but has attached itself to the church for centuries. In 1373, Giovanni Boccaccio delivered public readings of the Divine Comedy inside the Badia, making it, briefly, one of the intellectual centers of the city.

Architecture

The original Romanesque abbey faced west, with three apses to the east, set at the edge of Florence's earliest city walls. In 1285, Arnolfo di Cambio - the architect behind Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo - was commissioned to rebuild the church in the Gothic style, a project that took roughly three decades and reversed the building's orientation so the apse faced east. Part of that Gothic structure was deliberately demolished in 1307 as punishment against the monks for refusing to pay a tax; it was rebuilt by Giovanni Villani, who combined Romanesque lower work with Gothic upper elements and completed the slim campanile between 1310 and 1330. In 1627 the church was reworked again, this time in Baroque style on a Greek Cross plan, under Abbot Serafino Casolani and architect Matteo Segaloni. The monastery was suppressed in 1810, and the surrounding complex was carved up into houses, shops, offices, and storerooms - a fate common to Florentine religious institutions under Napoleonic-era secularization.

Art

The church's best-known work is Filippino Lippi's Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard, painted between 1482 and 1486 for a different chapel entirely and moved to the Badia in 1530. The altarpiece is known for its Flemish-influenced color and its unusually grounded, everyday treatment of a mystical scene - including a demon biting its own chains behind St. Bernard, and a scroll bearing Epictetus's Latin phrase sustine et abstine ("bear and forbear").

Mino da Fiesole's sculpture is the other major draw: his 1481 marble Tomb of Ugo of Tuscany is one of his most significant works, combining marble and porphyry and topped by a personification of Charity. His Tomb of Bernardo Giugni (1466-69) and the Neroni Dossal are also here. Additional works include Giorgio Vasari's Assumption of the Virgin Mary and Saints (1568), a pipe organ dating to 1558, and 18th-century apse murals by Giovanni Domenico Ferretti. Giotto's Badia Polyptych once hung here as well - it now lives in the Uffizi.

Cloister of the Oranges

Built between 1432 and 1438 with Bernardo Rossellino, the Cloister of the Oranges (Chiostro degli Aranci) takes its name from an early, failed attempt to grow orange trees inside its walls. The upper-floor fresco cycle depicting the life of St. Benedict, painted around 1435-39, is usually attributed to the anonymous "Master of the Cloister of the Oranges," possibly the Portuguese painter Giovanni di Consalvo working in Fra Angelico's circle. One scene in the cycle was repainted by Bronzino in the 1520s. The cloister is only open during the Monday tourist-visit window - there is no other way in.

Visiting

The Badia Fiorentina is a working monastery, home to the Monastic Communities of Jerusalem, and it runs on a liturgical schedule rather than standard museum hours. The one general tourist-visit window - covering both the church and the Cloister of the Oranges - is Monday, 3 to 5:30 p.m., with last entry at 5 p.m. Entry to the church is free; the cloister is €3.

Outside that window, the church is not open for casual sightseeing. It is, however, open to anyone who wants to attend a service: 7 a.m. Lauds, 12:30 p.m. midday prayer, and 6 p.m. Vespers followed by Mass, Tuesday through Friday; 8 a.m. Lauds, 12:30 p.m. midday prayer and Mass, and 6 p.m. First Vespers of Sunday on Saturday; and 8 a.m. Office, 11 a.m. Mass, and 6:30 p.m. Vespers on Sunday. Monday has no services at all - it's kept as a quiet day for the community, which is also why the community reserves it for visitors instead. The abbey is closed throughout August.

Dress modestly - shoulders and knees covered, no shorts or sandals - as at any Florentine church. The building is not wheelchair accessible; there are steps at both entrances. A small shop inside sells soaps and other goods made by the community.

A modern footnote

Dan Brown's novel Inferno opens at the Badia's bell tower, which has sent a wave of contemporary readers looking for the real building behind the fiction - only to find, most days, a quiet working monastery rather than a tourist site.