Tornabuoni and Santa Maria Novella

Basilica di Santa Maria Novella

The Dominican church whose frescoes taught Florence to paint depth, from Masaccio's Holy Trinity to Ghirlandaio's Tornabuoni Chapel.

You're standing before the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, begun in 1279 and consecrated in 1420. The lower half of the facade is medieval stone; the upper half, with its clean marble geometry, was finished by Leon Battista Alberti around 1470, and it became the pattern for church fronts across the Renaissance. Step inside and walk halfway up the left aisle. There, in the third arcade, hangs Masaccio's Holy Trinity, painted around 1427.

It is often called the first painting to use true linear perspective, and its barrel vault seems to open a real hole in the wall. Beneath the painted Christ sits a skeleton on a stone ledge, with the inscription, I was once what you are, and what I am you will become. Then turn toward the high altar. The Tornabuoni Chapel, the largest in the church, carries Ghirlandaio's frescoes of the lives of the Virgin and John the Baptist, painted from 1485 to 1490.

Look for the crowds of Florentines standing inside the biblical scenes; a young Michelangelo is said to have worked here as an apprentice.

Palazzo Strozzi

The rusticated stone palace that one Medici rival built to outdo them, with a courtyard anyone can step into.

You've reached Palazzo Strozzi, the great block of rusticated stone at the corner of Via Tornabuoni and Via Strozzi. Filippo Strozzi the Elder returned to Florence in 1466 after twenty-five years of exile under the Medici, and he wanted a house that would announce his family's comeback. He spent from 1473 to 1489 buying and demolishing the smaller buildings on this corner to clear the site. The foundation stone went down at dawn on the sixth of August 1489, timed by an astrologer so that the sign of Leo was rising, a promise that the palace would last forever.

Work on the facade, with its rough stone that lightens as it climbs, continued after Filippo died in 1491 and finished in 1538. Cosimo I de' Medici confiscated the palace that same year and kept it from the family for three decades. Today it holds a contemporary art foundation and a cafe, but you can simply step through the door into the colonnaded courtyard, designed by Simone del Pollaiolo, called Il Cronaca. It is free to enter, and it gives you the cool, ordered calm a Florentine palace was built around.