| Further information |
The basilica of S Croce (of the Holy Cross), close to Duomo, Florence, is the largest Franciscan church worldwide. Allegedly founded by St Francis himself, the present building was consecrated in 1442. This lengthy two-aisled basilica has sixteen chapels, many of them decorated by Giotto and his workshop and houses a series of funerary monuments including those of Michelangelo and Galileo. The neo-Gothic façade of the monument is a nineteenth-century addition by the Jewish architect Niccolo Matas. |
