Basilica di Santa Croce

The largest Franciscan church on earth, begun 1294. The marble facade is actually 1860s, designed by the Jewish architect Niccolò Matas, who was refused burial inside and lies under the threshold instead, so every visitor passes over him.

Inside: Michelangelo's tomb (his body was smuggled home from Rome disguised as merchandise), Galileo's tomb directly opposite (denied a monument for 95 years as a condemned heretic), Machiavelli, Rossini, and Dante's empty cenotaph, since Ravenna still refuses to return his body after 700 years.

Giotto frescoed the Bardi Chapel for your palazzo's family around 1325. Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel in the cloister is the Renaissance stated in grey and white geometry. The Cimabue Crucifix in the refectory, half-erased by the 1966 flood, is the quarter's war memorial to that morning.