Santa Croce Church -10.03.06

We are back to Santa Croce, this time when it opens. It's big, it's Gothic, it's dark, and it's cold. I love it. This is so much cooler to me than the Renaissance churches like the Dumos (Duomi?) we have been seeing. Simpler, but more forbidding, and kind of creepy.

This particular Gothic church is full up with the tombs of famous Florentines. Galileo is here (the Church was kind enough to un-excommunicate him and bury him here about 100 years after he died; I guess they figured, if you can't beat "science," join it). So is Michelangelo, whose tomb has a bunch of sculptures by other people. Bummer for him that none of them are as good as his. Also Machiavelli, author of The Prince (and a chancellor of the short-lived Florentine Republic), and Dante, author of the Divine Comedy (really a worthwhile read just for the grody bits about the punishments available in Hell, BTW). Oddly enough, he's not actually buried there. It's just a monument. OK, whatever.