The Medici family church has a façade of rough stone, with the scaffolding holes still open: the marble facing Michelangelo designed was never applied. Yet behind that bare wall, at San Lorenzo, is the room in which Brunelleschi invented the modern way of building, and next door, in the Laurentian Library, Michelangelo’s most famous staircase.
There are two limits to bear in mind, though. The basilica is closed on Sundays, the day most people are free. And you may not get to see Michelangelo’s staircase: the Laurentian Library’s own site says that the monumental area opens to the public only during exhibitions, the last one closed on 23 August 2026, and as I write no new one has been announced.
Many travel sites go on publishing regular weekday hours, but what counts is what the library says. If you are coming for the staircase, telephone 055 2937911 first, or write to b-mela@cultura.gov.it.
Why did Michelangelo, in the vestibule of that library, set the columns inside the wall instead of in front of it?
Why the Medici church has the front of a warehouse
In the photograph above, that wall of rough stone, with the scaffolding holes still open and three doorways set into it without surrounds, is the main front of the family basilica of the richest man in Europe.
How is that possible? Because the facing was never applied. In the sixteenth century Michelangelo was commissioned to design the façade and worked on it for years, getting as far as a wooden model that still exists. Then the contract was dissolved and nothing came of it. In the five centuries since, nobody has wanted or dared to finish it.
The result is that San Lorenzo shows its own structure bare, and the effect is more interesting than the marble would have been: you see the skeleton of a fifteenth-century building without its clothes. Look behind the façade and you find the dome of the Medici Chapels and the bell tower, which were finished, and the difference between the two speaks for itself.
The Old Sacristy, where the modern way of building was born
How does a square room become a date in the history of architecture? By being the first of its kind: before this one nobody had built one like it.
The Old Sacristy is by Filippo Brunelleschi and belongs to the 1420s. It is a cube covered by an umbrella dome, with a smaller square chancel at the back repeating the same scheme. The walls are white, and across them run members of grey pietra serena: pilasters, cornices, arches.
That grey is not decoration: it is the design made visible. Brunelleschi separates structure from infill and colours them differently, so that anyone entering can read the building the way you read a diagram. Before him churches were continuous surfaces; from here on, for four centuries, Italian architecture would use this grammar. You see the same thing at larger scale in the nave of the basilica, just outside the door.
The decoration is by Donatello, and it was not a peaceful collaboration: Brunelleschi wanted the eight roundels around the dome left empty, and the sources report that he disliked the stuccoes. Look at them high up, along with the bronze doors, and bear in mind that the two men had been friends and rivals for a lifetime.
Old and New: two sacristies, two tickets
People often get this wrong, and the mistake costs money and time.
The same basilica contains two sacristies. The Old one is Brunelleschi’s and opens inside the church: it is covered by the basilica ticket. The New one is by Michelangelo, with the Medici tombs and the allegories of Day, Night, Dawn and Dusk, and you do not get in from here: it belongs to the Medici Chapels, a state museum with its own entrance behind the apse and a separate ticket.
The basilica’s own site says so explicitly: the 9 euro ticket covers neither the Library nor the Medici Chapels. So do not look for the New Sacristy inside the church: you will find it, with its own article, at the Medici Chapels.
Michelangelo’s staircase, and how to know whether you will get to see it
The Ricetto of the Laurentian Library is a tall, narrow vestibule almost entirely filled by a pietra serena staircase that pours downwards in three flights, its central steps shaped in ovals.
It is famous because Michelangelo does something here that the architecture of his time considered incorrect: he sets the columns inside the wall instead of in front of it, and sets the columns on brackets that hold up nothing. The classical rules are quoted and contradicted in the same gesture, which is why the Ricetto is named as one of the founding acts of Mannerism.
Warning: this is the part of the route you may not see. The monumental area, meaning the Ricetto and the reading room, opens only when there is an exhibition. There is one way to know before you set out: check the library’s exhibitions page, or telephone.
The cloister, on the other hand, is crossed on the way, and from there you see the front of the library, which is already something.
Practical information
Details checked on 10 September 2026 on the sites of the basilica and of the library. Prices and opening times change: check again before you travel.
Tickets. Admission costs 9 euros and covers the basilica, the Old Sacristy, the cloisters, the Treasury Museum, the crypt and the monumental undercrofts. Children up to 12 go in free, and so do visitors with disabilities and one companion, and licensed tour guides.
Opening times. The basilica opens Monday to Saturday 10:00-17:30, with last admission at 16:30. Closed on Sunday, and also on 1 January, 6 January and 10 August.
The Laurentian Library has its own ticket and its own calendar, and its monumental area opens only during exhibitions. The number is 055 2937911.
The Medici Chapels are a separate visit, with a different entrance and a different ticket.
Getting there. The basilica is on piazza San Lorenzo, five minutes from the cathedral, in the middle of the market stalls. The visitors’ door opens on the flank, not on the bare façade.
How long it takes. An hour for the basilica, the Old Sacristy and the cloisters. An hour and a half adding the Treasury Museum and the crypt.
The rest of Florence
San Lorenzo and the Medici Chapels are the same complex with two tickets, and together they tell the Medici from beginning to end: here the sacristy where the first ones were buried, there the one in which Michelangelo buried the last. The full two-day picture is in what to see in Florence in 2 days.
If the Old Sacristy has shown you what Brunelleschi was after, the next step is the cathedral dome, which is the same man at maximum scale, and the Baptistery, where his career began with a defeat.
The power that paid for all this is on show at Palazzo Vecchio, and the friary the Medici funded is the Museo di San Marco.
Photo credits: façade by PriorImage (CC BY-SA 3.0); Old Sacristy and cloister by Sailko (CC BY 2.5). All from Wikimedia Commons.
