La Piadina di Casa Maioli - Santa Maria Novella — Restaurant in Florence

Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated opposite, and lending its name to, the city's main railway station. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church.

The church, the adjoining cloister, and chapter house contain a multiplicity of art treasures and funerary monuments. Especially famous are frescoes by masters of Gothic and early Renaissance. They were financed by the most important Florentine families, who ensured themselves funerary chapels on consecrated ground.

This church was called S. Maria Novella ('New') because it was built on the site of the 9th-century oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne. When the site was assigned to the Dominican Order in 1221, they decided to build a new church and adjoining cloister. The church was designed by two Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi. Building began in the mid-13th century (about 1276), and lasted 80 years, ending under the supervision of Friar Iacopo Talenti with the completion of the Romanesque-Gothic bell tower and sacristy. In 1360, a series of Gothic arcades were added to the façade; these were intended to contain sarcophagi. The church was consecrated in 1420.

On a commission from the wealthy Florentine wool merchant Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, Leon Battista Alberti designed the upper part of the inlaid green marble of Prato, also called 'serpentino', and white marble façade of the church (1456–1470). He was already famous as the architect of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, but even more for his seminal treatise on architecture De re aedificatoria. Alberti had also designed the façade for the Rucellai Palace in Florence.

Alberti attempted to bring the ideals of humanist architecture, proportion and classically inspired detailing to bear on the design, while also creating harmony with the already existing medieval part of the façade. The combined façade can be inscribed by a square; many other repetitions of squares can be found in the design. His contribution consists of a broad frieze decorated with squares, and the full upper part, including the four white-green pilasters and a round window, crowned by a pediment with the Dominican solar emblem, and flanked on both sides by enormous S-curved volutes. The four columns with Corinthian capitals on the lower part of the façade were also added. The pediment and the frieze are clearly inspired by antiquity, but the S-curved scrolls in the upper part are new and without precedent in antiquity. Solving a longstanding architectural problem of how to transfer from wide to narrow storeys, the scrolls (or variations of them), found in churches all over Italy, all draw their origins from the design of this church.

Giorgio Vasari was the architect, commissioned in 1567 by Grand Duke Cosimo I, for the first remodelling of the church, which included removing its original rood screen and loft, and adding six chapels between the columns. An armillary sphere (on the left) and a gnomon (on the right) were added to the end blind arches of the lower façade by Ignazio Danti, astronomer of Cosimo I, in 1572. The second remodelling was designed by Enrico Romoli, and was carried out between 1858 and 1860.

The square in front the church was used by Cosimo I for the yearly chariot race (Palio dei Cocchi). This custom existed between 1563 and late in the 19th century. The two Obelisks of the Corsa dei Cocchi marked the start and the finish of the race. They were set up to imitate an antique Roman Circus Maximus. The obelisks rest on bronze tortoises, made in 1608 by the sculptor...

Situated not far from the train station, this large, roughly pentagon-shaped piazza has a number of hotels, restaurants, and stores around the perimeter with some vendors during the day. There is also a taxi stand of sorts at the south end that always have one or two waiting for customers. The park-like setting (there is more green here than in a typical piazza) is a good place to sit an admire the basilica, enjoy a gelato, or just watch the world go by. We always felt very safe here - people around no matter what time of the...

The enchanting beauty of the Dominican Basilica of Santa Maria Novella's Renaissance facade is usually what impresses the most at first sight. The piazza was born in 1287 by decree of the Florentine Republic. The two marble obelisks, each one sitting atop four bronze turtles by Giambologna and topped with a Florentine lily, were the "goal areas" for the "Palio dei Cocchi", a race on chariots similar to the Roman two-horse chariots which started being raced...