We start our tour of Florence's Santa Croce district on the city's Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge lined with jewellers shops which traverses the river Arno. In 1565 Cosimo I commissioned Giorgio Vasari to find a way of uniting the Palazzo Vecchio with Palazzo Pitti, buildings situated on opposite sides of the river. Thus, the Corridorio Vasariano was created: an elevated covered walkway which starts from the west corridor of the Uffizi and follows the river Arno as far as the Ponte Vecchio which it then crosses by passing on top of the shops. The Uffizi Gallery boasts one of the world's most important collections of art: housing a quite staggering number of masterpieces dating from the 13th to 17th century. The rooms containing the artworks of the Renaissance period are by far the largest. This is where to admire Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and Michelangelo's "Tondo Doni", to name just two of the breathtaking works of art conserved within the gallery walls.
Rising up next to the Uffizi, facing on to Piazza della Signoria, we find Palazzo Vecchio, built in Tuscan Gothic style with solid rustic stonework work and crenulated battlements. The construction of the edifice was a direct consequence of the great social, economic, and political development of 13th century Florence which led to the creation of its communal government in 1250 and, some years later, the Palazzo del Capitano, now Il Bargello. It was not until 1294 that Giano della Bella proposed to the Council of 100 Gentlemen the construction of Palazzo dei Priori (as Palazzo Vecchio was first called). Building work, according to the documents written by Vasari, commenced in 1299 and terminated in 1314, and was supervised by Arnolfo di Cambio, the most influential Florentine architect of the period.
The 94 meter high tower within the facade, the so-called Arnolfo tower, dates back to 1310 and incorporates within its walls the older Foraboschi tower, and accounts for its less than central position. To the right of the Loggia della Signoria, beyond the Bargello Museum, we come to the lively Piazza Ghirbeti, venue for a daily open air market where to purchase every genre of goods from food to flowers, and Piazza de' Ciompi where a flee market is regularly held beneath Vasari's Loggia del Mercato Vecchio. In Via Ghibellina we find Casa Buonarotti, palazzo which houses a museum created in honour of the building's most famous proprietor, the artist Michelangelo.
To the south of Casa Buonarotti lies Piazza Santa Croce, a magnificent square bordered by splendid palazzi and home to Florence's Basilica of Santa Croce. This Franciscan complex was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1295. The façade of the gothic basilica was built between 1853 and 1863 by Nicola Matas.
Giotto arrived at Santa Croce as a mature artist, after a long period spent in Assisi and Padua. His Florentine work, and in particular that seen in Santa Croce, focuses less on chiaroscuro and much more on the use of colour.
The presence within the complex of funeral monuments of many an illustrious personage, including those of a number of scientists, earned the basilica its description as pantheon of the Italians in Ugo Foscolo's "Sepolcri". To the right, passing through the cloisters, we come to the de' Pazzi Chapel designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and the Museum of Santa Croce.
