The great Florentines in Santa Croce, with some side comments by Mark Twain

One of my main goals in Florence was to visit Santa Croce and see the tombs and monuments to great Florentines. Santa Croce did not disappoint. From outside on the piazza, it's hard to grasp its size, inside it's immense. Though Santa Maria Novella is still probably my favorite of the "big three" in Florence, Santa Croce, whose bells I heard at night and which I passed every day, remains special.

Here's some comments from Mark Twain, from Innocents Abroad (1869) on the monuments of Santa Croce:

Caption

Galileo
That we had lived to see his dust in honored sepulchure in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of literati, and not to Florence or her rulers.
















Dante
We saw Dante's tomb in that church, also, but we were glad to know that his body was not in it; that the ungrateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would give much to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure that high honor to herself.












Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini (not Raphael)

"We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, (I suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside elsewhere and rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion in Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the Arno."

(from left: Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Rossini)