The church without a face

Brunelleschi died before this church was finished, and the people who took over made one choice he never would have. That is why you now stand in front of a flat yellow wall with two scrolls, where he had something completely different in mind.

His plan for Santo Spirito was a building that showed on the outside what was happening within. Forty semicircular chapels run around the whole nave, and they were meant to stay visible from the street as a row of bulges, so that the wall would give away the shape of the space inside. After his death, the builders found that too strange and bricked the exterior up straight.

Inside, his idea survived. Thirty-five columns stand in two rows at the exact same spacing, even around the altar, which makes the space look equally regular in every direction and never turns a corner. The columns sit sunk into the wall, with the chapels as niches behind them.

The Augustinians who lived here also ran a hospital, and they let a young sculptor from the neighbourhood dissect bodies in exchange for a wooden crucifix. The church is free to enter and closes for a couple of hours around midday, and inside a story is waiting for you about that row of columns and about the crucifix that boy left behind.