Basilica di San Lorenzo & the Laurentian Library
Why is it significant?
In front of you is a great church with no face: a bare wall of rough brick, holes and all, where a marble front was supposed to go. San Lorenzo has one of the most famous unfinished façades in the world, and the reason it is bare is a Medici story.
Key Facts
| Place | Basilica di San Lorenzo & the Laurentian Library |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza di San Lorenzo 9, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.77470, 11.25410 |
| Part of Walk | The Medici Quarter of Florence: Palaces, Tombs and Rivals from San Lorenzo to Santa Maria Novella |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you is a great church with no face: a bare wall of rough brick, holes and all, where a marble front was supposed to go. San Lorenzo has one of the most famous unfinished façades in the world, and the reason it is bare is a Medici story.
A church stood here as early as the fourth century; it was consecrated in 393 by Saint Ambrose of Milan. In the early 1400s Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, Cosimo's father, paid Filippo Brunelleschi to rebuild it, and San Lorenzo became the Medici parish and family mausoleum. A century later a Medici pope, Leo X, commissioned Michelangelo to design a marble façade. The contract was signed in 1518 and cancelled in 1520. Michelangelo's wooden model survives in Casa Buonarroti; the bricks are still waiting.
Inside, Cosimo the Elder lies in the crypt beneath the high altar. On the floor in front of the altar a plaque gives him the title Pater Patriae, Father of his Country, voted by the city after his death in 1464. Donatello asked to be buried close to his great patron, and so he is.
Through the cloister on the left, a staircase leads up to the Laurentian Library, commissioned by another Medici pope, Clement VII, and designed by Michelangelo from 1524. The vestibule is a deliberately strange room: columns sunk into the walls, brackets that hold up nothing, and a staircase that seems to pour down like lava. Bartolomeo Ammannati built it in 1559 following Michelangelo's instructions, and the library opened in 1571. Among its treasures are the Codex Amiatinus, the oldest complete Latin Bible, and a Virgil copied in late antiquity.
One family, a whole century of patronage: a banker's father pays for the church, his son is buried under it, two popes from the family fill it with Michelangelo. Now walk along the left side of the church to the back, where a huge dome rises over a small square. That dome is the family's final word.