Santa Croce Church

Basilica is a Catholic. Construction began on May 3, 1294 on the ruins of a small church built in 1252 by the Franciscans after the death of St. Francis of Assisi.

The building of the basilica of Santa Cruz began in 1294, having been designed the plans by Arnolfo di Cambio. It is the largest Franciscan church in the world.

Supported by the people and the Florentine Republic, was built on the basis of a small church near the walls of the villa, built in 1252 by the Franciscans soon after the death of San Francisco.

The remains of the old church could not be reached until 1966 when, after floods devastated the city, part of the current basilica floor collapsed.

Since its inception, the history of Santa Cruz is closely linked to the history of Florence.During the seven centuries since its founding, the basilica underwent several renovations and modernization projects acquiring new well, new symbolic connotations: from its origins first Franciscan church, to become a "municipality" for large religious families and corporations of Medicean Florence, laboratory and art studio in the early-Renaissance humanist-a theological center of the pantheon of Italian glories to become a landmark in the nineteenth century the political history of Italy before and after -unitary.

They are in this church the tomb of Michelangelo and Galileo Galiei