Florence Baptistery — church building
Zairon · CC BY 4.0

Florence Baptistery

Battistero di San Giovanni

  • 2 min read
  • 43.773° N 11.255° E

Interesting facts

  • The lantern crowning the dome, finished in 1150 according to the chronicler Giovanni Villani, is the earliest known example of a roof lantern in architecture.
  • The two porphyry columns beside the east doors were Pisan war booty from Mallorca, given to Florence in 1117 for guarding Pisa against Lucca.
  • The green-and-white zebra-striped corner pilasters are a later addition, applied in 1293 when work on the new cathedral began.
  • Brunelleschi claimed to find only one error in the building: an attic entablature that bends from horizontal to vertical, against classical rules.
  • Ghiberti's north doors took 21 years and cost roughly as much as Florence's annual defence budget; Donatello, Uccello and Masolino worked in his shop.
  • Ghiberti's first doors originally faced the cathedral, but were moved to the north side so the even finer Gates of Paradise could take their place.
  • Ghiberti slipped his own portrait into the frames of both his door sets, first in middle age and again as an old man.
  • The huge interior columns could not be quarried in the eleventh century, so they were almost certainly salvaged from Roman buildings near today's Piazza della Repubblica.
  • Set into the wall of the rectangular apse is a fragment of a Roman sarcophagus showing a grape harvest and a wine ship, probably made for a wine merchant.
  • The original five-basin font for mass baptisms was dismantled in 1577 by Francesco I de' Medici to make room for a grand-ducal celebration, to Florentines' dismay.

Why it is worth it

The Baptistery of San Giovanni is the building Florentines have always treated as the soul of their city. Every child was baptised here, Dante among them; the feast of St John on 24 June is still a city holiday; and Filippo Brunelleschi considered it a near-perfect building that inspired his studies of perspective. It stands opposite the cathedral façade on Piazza San Giovanni, a compact octagon clad in two colours of marble in crisp geometric patterns.

Its origins are a centuries-old puzzle. Medieval Florentines believed it was a Roman temple of Mars; excavations proved otherwise. Most scholars now date it to the eleventh or twelfth century, a proto-Renaissance building that already looks back to the Pantheon with its dome, classical columns and window surrounds. That Roman calm, achieved centuries before the Renaissance proper, is why it inspired Brunelleschi and generations of architects.

The three sets of gilded bronze doors are the most famous in art. Andrea Pisano led the making of the south doors, with twenty scenes of the Baptist's life. In 1401 the guild of cloth merchants held a competition for a second set; the young Lorenzo Ghiberti beat Brunelleschi, and many date the Renaissance from that contest. Ghiberti then spent decades on a further set with Old Testament scenes, commissioned in 1425 — the doors Michelangelo called worthy to be the Gates of Paradise. The originals are now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo; faithful copies hang in the frames.

Inside, the building transforms. The dome is covered in a golden Italo-Byzantine mosaic of the thirteenth century, made of some ten million tesserae, dominated by a six-metre-high Christ in Judgment, with fifteen scenes of the Baptist's life among the tiers circling above. Beneath it lies the tomb of the Antipope John XXIII by Donatello and Michelozzo, the first Renaissance funerary monument.

Getting there

The Baptistery stands on Piazza San Giovanni in the centre of Florence, facing the cathedral. The nearest airport is Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR), about 6 km away. The centre is largely pedestrian; arrive on foot.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Florence 18The Most Beautiful Places in Tuscany 37The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Tuscany 11The Most Beautiful Churches in Italy 37The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Italy 83The Most Beautiful Churches 186The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Florence Baptistery, also known as the Baptistery of Saint John, is a religious building in Florence, Italy. Dedicated to the patron saint of the city, John the Baptist, it has been a focus of religious, civic, and artistic life since its completion. The octagonal baptistery stands in both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza San Giovanni, between Florence Cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

43.77306, 11.25500per Wikidata