Churches & Religious Sites — Firenze

An octagonal Romanesque baptistery facing the Duomo, celebrated for Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze doors, the "Gates of Paradise", and the mosaics inside its golden dome.

Florence's largest Franciscan church, its 19th-century neo-Gothic facade fronting the burial place of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli, earning it the nickname "Temple of the Italian Glories".

The Dominican order's principal Florentine church, its green-and-white marble facade a Renaissance landmark designed by Leon Battista Alberti in 1470 for the Rucellai banking family.

A Renaissance basilica designed by Filippo Brunelleschi from 1434, its deliberately unadorned facade concealing a serene colonnaded interior and a wooden crucifix carved by the young Michelangelo.

Brunelleschi's red-tiled dome crowns Florence's Gothic cathedral, begun in 1296 and still one of the largest masonry domes ever built, at the heart of the historic centre.

Florence's freestanding Gothic bell tower, begun by the painter Giotto in 1334 and finished by two later architects, with 414 steps leading to sweeping city views.

A former 14th-century grain market turned church, its exterior niches once held statues of patron saints by Donatello, Ghiberti and Verrocchio, commissioned by Florence's powerful guilds from 1339.

One of Tuscany's finest Romanesque churches, its green-and-white marble facade crowning a hill above the city since the 11th century, still run today by resident Olivetan monks.