The Romanesque Baptistery may have been built as early as the 5th century on the site of a Roman temple. It is one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The present facade dates from about the 11th century. It is said that the eighth side represents the (nonexistent) eighth day of the week, which symbolises birth, death and resurrection all in one.

Most striking are the three sets of bronze doors, conceived as a series of panels in which the story of humanity and the Redemption would be told. The earliest set of doors was completed by Andrea Pisano in 1336.

Lorenzo Ghiberti tied with Brunelleschi in a competition in 1401-2 to do the north doors. Brunelleschi was so disgusted that he flounced off to Rome, leaving Ghiberti to toil away for 20 years. Good as his late-Gothic effort was, Ghiberti returned almost immediately to his workshops to turn out the east doors. Made of gilded bronze, they took 28 years to complete. So extraordinary were his exertions that, many years later, Michelangelo stood before the doors and declared them fit to be the Porta del Paradiso (Gate of Paradise), which is how they remain known to this day.

Completed in 1385, this Gothic temple is as much the resting place of a Who's Who of Florentine greats as repository of stunning art. The magnificent facade is a neo-Gothic addition of the 19th century! Deceptive, huh? Michelangelo's tomb here was designed by Vasari. Galileo and the composer Rossini also rest in peace here.

The two chapels nearest the right side of the Cappella Maggiore, belonging to the Bardi and Peruzzi clans, are decorated with partly fragmented frescoes by Giotto. Brunelleschi designed the serene cloisters, dominated by his Cappella de' Pazzi.

On the southern flank of Piazza del Carmine, this chapel is a treasure trove of paintings by Masolino da Panicale, Masaccio and Filippino Lippi. Above all, the frescoes by Masaccio are considered among his greatest works, representing a definitive break with Gothic art and a plunge into new worlds of expression in the early stages of the Renaissance.

His Cacciata dei Progenitori (Expulsion of Adam and Eve), on the left side of the chapel, is the bestknown work. His depiction of Eve's anguish in particular lends the image a human touch hitherto little seen in European painting. In times gone by, prudish church authorities had Adam and Eve's privates covered up.

Masaccio painted these frescoes in his early twenties and interrupted the task to go to Rome, where he died aged only 28. The cycle was completed 60 years later by Filippino Lippi. That you can even see these frescoes today is little short of miraculous. The 13th century church was nearly destroyed by a fire in the late 18th century. About the only thing the fire spared was the chapel.

It seems odd that the Medici chapels, built to balance the Brunelleschi sacristy on the other side of the church, have for organisational purposes been hived off from the church itself. Visitors enter from another point behind the church rather than from inside and thus have difficulty picturing how the chapels fit in with the rest of the complex.

You first enter a crypt. The stairs from this take you up to the Cappella dei Principi (Princes' Chapel). The so-called chapel is actually the triumphalist mausoleum of some of the Medici rulers. It is sumptuously decorated with various kinds of marble, granite and other stone, and there are decorative tableaux made from painstakingly chosen and cut pietre dure (semiprecious stones). It was for the purpose of decorating the chapel that Ferdinando I ordered the creation of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.

Statues of the grand men were supposed to be placed in the still-empty niches, but only the bronze of Ferdinando I and partly gilt bronze of Cosimo II were done. The chapel's unfinished state lends it a gloomy air. Had the remaining statues been created, the chapel would no doubt have all the grandeur of the great royal pantheons.