Fashionistas may remember the Church Orsanmichele in Florence in conjunction with a rather questionable event that featured Gareth Pugh, yet there is a lot more to discover about this building.
The first building erected on this site was a small oratory secreted in the orchard of a vegetable garden (orto) of a Benedictine monastery and open loggia with a grain warehouse upstairs.
A larger church stood on the site from the 9th century - San Michele ad Hortum or San Michele in Orte (contracted in Orsanmichele). The church was replaced by a grain market in the 13th century but the place retained its religious associations.
Today it's the feast of Saint Anne, and Florence celebrates its co-patron Saint with an art and archtectural event at the Orsanmichele Church and Museum. On 26th July 1343 Florence expelled from the city the tyrant Gualtieri di Brienne and the locals linked this episode to the figure of Saint Anne, declaring this date a solemn feast.
The Orsanmichele Church features one of the most ancient images of Saint Anne that you will ever find in the city, a fresco of the Saint painted in 1398 by Mariotto Di Nardo portraying the Saint with a miniature model of the city in her hands. The fresco is located over the votive altar of St. Anne, built in 1379, with a marble group of St. Anne, the Virgin and Child by Francesco da Sangallo (c. 1526).
After today's mass in the morning and the offering of the candles to the saint at 9.30 p.m., the church will remain open throughout the summer, and tomorrow there will be a special opening of the museum.
Entry will be free and tourists and locals will be able to admire the original sculptures created in the 15th and 16th centuries by Florentine artists. These pieces - Lorenzo Ghiberti's Saint Matthew, Saint Stephan and Saint John the Baptist, Nanni di Banco's Saint Eligius, Saint Philip, Four Crowned Saints group, Donatello's Saint Mark, Baccio da Montelupo's Saint John the Evangelist, Andrea del Verrocchio's Christ and Doubting Thomas, Giambologna's Saint Luke, Donatello's Saint Peter, Saint Jacob attributed to Niccolò di Pietro Lamberti, and the Madonna della Rosa attributed to Piero di Giovanni Tedesco - were originally located in the niches decorating the external sides of the church.
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