Santa Felicita: The Church with the Medici in the Gallery
Why is it significant?
Stand in the little square and look at the church porch: above the arches runs a long, windowed passage that comes straight out of the neighbouring houses, crosses the whole front of the church and disappears again on the other side.
Key Facts
| Place | Santa Felicita: The Church with the Medici in the Gallery |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza di Santa Felicita 3, 50125 Firenze FI, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 43.76700, 11.25250 |
| Part of Walk | Florence Across the Arno: Oltrarno Artisans, Santo Spirito & San Frediano |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in the little square and look at the church porch: above the arches runs a long, windowed passage that comes straight out of the neighbouring houses, crosses the whole front of the church and disappears again on the other side. That is the Vasari Corridor, the private elevated walkway of the Medici, and this is the only church in Florence that it crosses.
Santa Felicita is one of the oldest Christian sites in the city. In late Roman times this was outside the walls, on the road south, and an early Christian cemetery grew up here, used by merchants from the eastern Mediterranean who had settled by the river. The church has been rebuilt many times since, and the interior you see today dates largely from the eighteenth century.
Now picture the Medici at Mass. When Vasari built the corridor in 1565, he gave the family a private balcony high up inside the church, behind a grille. The Grand Duke could walk from his offices to the Pitti Palace without touching the street, stop here, hear Mass, and never be seen by his subjects below. The corridor was closed for years and reopened to visitors in December 2024.
The real treasure is just inside the door, on the right, in the Capponi Chapel. Between 1525 and 1528 the painter Jacopo Pontormo created his Deposition here, and it looks like nothing else of its time. There is no cross, no landscape, no ground to stand on. Figures in pinks, pale blues and acid greens float and twist around the body of Christ, their faces stunned, almost dreamlike. Vasari says Pontormo kept the chapel screened off for three years, letting no one see his work until it was finished. Look for the bearded man at the far right edge: he is often taken to be Pontormo's own self-portrait.
It is one of the masterpieces of what we now call Mannerism, and many visitors crossing the Ponte Vecchio walk past this door without knowing it is there. Now cross Via de' Guicciardini and slip into the narrow lanes on the far side, following Via Toscanella to a tiny triangular square with a very strange name.