Santo Spirito is the name given to the fourth section of Florence, which lies on the south side of the river. It is also known locally as l'oltrano and has its own distinctive character and strong sense of identity.

Santa Felicita: 9.30-12; 15.30-17.30. Closed Sunday.

The church which originally stood on this site was probably the oldest in the city after San Lorenzo. The present church only dates back to the first half of the 18th century. The church has little merit, it is only visited because of the masterpieces painted by Jacopo Pontormo for the Cappella Capponi. In 1525, Ludovico Capponi bought the chapel off the Barbardori family. He then commissioned Pontormo to furnish it with frescoes and an altarpiece of the 'Deposition from the Cross'.

The painting is one of the strangest images that you are likely to see in Florence and it will come as no surprise to learn that the artist actually walled up the chapel for three years to prevent anyone from seeing what he was painting. In his use of colour, space and form, Pontormo breaks almost every rule in the book.

In the church, at the back of the nave, you can see a curtained balcony. This is part of the corridor, which Vasari built to link the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, and which we encountered in Walk One. The balcony gave the Medici family the opportunity to 'attend' a church service, in complete privacy, whenever the fancy took them!

The Palazzo Pitti was built in the middle of the 15th century for the merchant and banker, Luca PItti. Pitti wanted a palace that would outshine that of the Medici family, a building so large that the Medici Palace could comfortably fit into its courtyard. Although the original palace consisted of only the central seven bays, it was still colossal for its day. A number of houses were demolished in order to create the immense piazza in front of the palace. It is no use owning such an imposing building, if people can't get a proper view of it!

A century later the palace was bought by Eleanora di Toledo, the wife of Duke Cosimo I. In 1560, it became the new site of the Medici court, one of the delightful ironies of history. For the palace that was built to outclass the Medici family ended up being bought by one of them! To add insult to injury, the Duchess paid the Pitti family (who had fallen on hard times) a fraction of what it had cost to build. Thank goodness, Luca Pitti was not around to witness all this!

The Palace houses the Galleria Palatina, a sumptuous collection of paintings acquired over several centuries by the Medici family. 

The Palatine Gallery

At the rear of the palace, lie the famous Boboli Gardens, one of the largest Italianate gardens in the world and the perfect place to wind down after an intensive hour or two spent looking at pictures.

Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens were designed and laid out for Duke Cosimo I by Tribolo, often referred to as the 'father of the Italian formal garden'. The gardens were open to the public for the first time in 1766. The curious name probably derives from one of the former owners of the hillside, on which the gardens were laid out, namely, the Borbolini family.

The House of Bianca Cappello

A short distance away from the Pitti Palace, in the via Maggio, can be found the house of Bianco Cappello, which still retains its beautifully decorated facade.

Bianco Cappello was a Venetian noblewoman, who became first the mistress and then the wife of the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco I de' Medici. She arrived in Florence as the young bride of an impecunious Florentine. The couple had in fact eloped, much to the dismay of her family. We don't know when exactly Bianca and Francesco met, but it was love at first sight as far as the latter was concerned. His marriage to Joanna of Austria did nothing to quell his ardour and when Bianco's husband was fortuitously stabbed to death she became his mistress.

He installed her in this palace so that she could be near to him and when his own wife died he promptly married her. Ten years later both Francesco and Bianca died within a day of each other.

Bianca's house is, by far, the best example in Florence of a technique known as sgraffito, which was commonly used in the 16th century. 

Santo Spirito

Brunelleschi's church of Sant Spirito is one of the purest creations of the Renaissance. It was designed by the master in 1436 and completed by a number of architects, one of whom was Antonio Manetti, Brunelleschi's first biographer.

Santo Spirito owes a great deal to San Lorenzo, which Brunelleschi also designed, in that the square of the crossing is used as the module for the ground plan of the whole church. The columns divide the aisles into bays of equal size, which continue throughout the transepts and into the choir. Bruenelleschi actually wanted the columns to continue uninterrupted all the way round the interior, but this would have resulted in their being a column in front of the main door. The only way to have solved this problem would have been to build four doors in the facade rather than the conventional three. It was the traditional battle of form versus function and form lost out, as it usually does.

There are many paintings in the church, but one in particular is worth looking out for. It is the painting of the 'Madonna and Child' by Filippino Lippi.

The painting was commissioned in the last decade of the 15th century by Tanna Nerli, whom we see kneeling on the left. Opposite him is his wife Nanna Capponi.

If you look very carefully at the scene in the background of the painting, you will see Nerli saying farewell to his family before he leaves the city by way of Porta San Frediano, the large gate in the distance, which still stands to this day.

Twenty years earlier, Filippino Lippi had been called in to finish a cycle of frescoes in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, which also sits on the south side of the city. The cycle had been started by Masaccio and Masolino, but both artists had moved on to other commissions before the frescoes had been completed.

The chapel is situated in the medieval church of Santa Maria del Carmine, which was devastated by a fire in 1771. Thankfully, the Brancacci Chapel, home to one of the most important fresco cycles of the Renaissance survived. The frescoes were commissioned by a rich silk merchant, Felice Brancacci, and illustrate scenes from the life of St Peter. It is no exaggeration to say that the  frescoes represent a turning point in the development of western painting. Although Masolino and Masaccio were initially both involved in the painting, Masolino left the site in 1425 and the work was carried on by Masaccio. In 1428, he too stopped work, moving to Rome where he died in the same year. His death, at the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, was one of the greatest losses in the history of western art. The frescoes were finally finished by Filippino Lippi in the 1480s.

Over the centuries, the frescoes have attracted artists of every calibre. Michelangelo was a frequent visitor. He came to study and copy the figures and learn the new technique of chiaroscuro (light and shade), which artists were beginningto use to model their figures, thus giving them greater weight and presence. It was in this very chapel that Michelangelo received the blow that broke his nose, leaving it permanently disfigured.

San Miniato al Monte: Winter: 8-12; 15-18; Hol./Sun. 15-18. Summer: 8-19.

The climax of any tour of the Oltrarno (the local name for the south side of the river) must be the church of San Miniato al Monte, the jewel in the Florentine crown.

The design of the interior is based on that of the early Christian basilicas with a nave, two aisles, but no transepts.

The facade is crowned with a bronze eagle holding a bale of cloth, the emblem of the Cloth Merchants' Guild, who were responsible for the upkeep of the church.

There is much to see inside the church, including the late 14th century frescoes in the Sacristy. They were painted by Spinello Aretino and illustrate the life of St Benedict, for the church was originally a Benedictine foundation.