The Medici Chapels and the San Lorenzo Basilica

San Lorenzo is far more than a church: it is the spiritual and dynastic heart of the Medici family, the rulers who shaped Florence for more than three centuries.A first church was consecrated here as early as 393, but everything changed in the 15th century, when the Medici rose to power. Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, founder of the family's banking empire, commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi to rebuild the church in 1419. The architect, who would later design Florence's famous dome, created one of the masterpieces of the early Renaissance.Yet the façade before you remains unfinished. In 1518, Pope Leo X, himself a Medici, entrusted Michelangelo with the project, but the work was abandoned just three years later. Five centuries on, the bare brick exterior still stands as a reminder of those unrealized ambitions.Behind the church lies the true Medici mausoleum: the Medici Chapels. The first, Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy, became the burial place of Giovanni di Bicci and his wife. A century later, two Medici popes commissioned Michelangelo to build the New Sacristy, where he sculpted his famous allegorical figures—Day and Night, Dawn and Dusk—which recline atop the tombs.The final addition was the Chapel of the Princes, an enormous mausoleum covered in colorful marble and precious stones, designed to celebrate the glory of the Medici grand dukes. Construction stretched on for more than three centuries, with some decorations not completed until the 19th century.The Medici dynasty eventually died out in the 18th century, but its legacy lives on in this extraordinary complex, which is at once a church, a museum and the final resting place of Florence's most powerful family.