Convent of San Marco

Overview

A hidden gem in the heart of Florence, for many years the Dominican Convent of San Marco was the residence of Friar Giovanni, better known as Beato Angelico. Here, the friar painter created some of his best known and most moving works, among the frescoes for designated areas of the convent. Together, we will visit environments that for centuries were off-limits for the public, deepening our knowledge about the personality and art of one of the initiators of the Renaissance.

Places

Convent of San Marco with works by Fra Angelico

Info

Tour duration: 2 hours

The tour is not available on the 1st, 3rd, 5th Sunday and on the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month, when the Museum is closed.
The Museum is open every morning from Monday to Friday; on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays is open until 4.50 PM.

The tour runs through a museum, it is suitable for all visitors and is not particularly difficult.

Fees

Guided Tour starting from 150,00 € max 3 hours

The fees do not include museum tickets, transportation costs or the rental of radio systems.

Museum of San Marco
Regular Tickets: 8,00 €
Reduced Tickets (UE Citizens between 18 and 25 years old): 2,00 €
Free Admission: Children under 18 years, Groups of students
Ticket Reservation Fee: 3,00 €; free for UE School Groups

In case of temporary exhibitions there might be a tickets’ surcharge.

By booking this tour we can follow you step by step, helping you to plan the visit of the museum. If you are going to visit it independently, we recommend reading our BLOG instead.

What to expect

This tour focuses on discovering a place hidden from distracted tourists and enclosing a beauty we could easily define as “divine”.

The Convent shares a bond to the Medici family, as the restoration of the entire structure was financed by Cosimo “the Elder”, who appointed his favourite architect, Michelozzo, to create a place to suitably welcome his friends belonging to the Dominican friars of the Osservanza. The walls of the Convent were to be decorated by a friar, Giovanni from Fiesole, better known as Beato Angelico, so that the images would be a true compendium of the principles and precepts the Dominicans were to remember during their days: that every gesture and word comes from a relation with Jesus.

We will move from the cloister into the inner environments, which were off-limits for centuries and testify how updated the friar was with regards to the new artistic trends of the city outside the friary walls. In each cell, Beato Angelico and his workshop depicted episodes from the life of Christ, with the goal of aiding the occupants in their meditations. He also painted a series of episodes, which we may consider true manifestos of Dominican spirituality, on the external corridor walls, where the friars would walk many times per day.

A true place of memory, the convent not only tells us about the spirituality of its inhabitants, but also narrates a particular moment in the history of Florence: the early rise of the Medici family, as well as the rapid opposition of the convent against its very own benefactors when Girolamo Savonarola, the head of the so-called Piagnoni faction, became the Prior of the Convent. In his preaching, he opposed the moral corruption he believed the oligarchic families, and mainly the Medici, had helped spread across the city.

Another emblematic environment of the Convent is the library built by Michelozzo, where some exceptionally precious and rare texts – with some parts in Greek – are housed. Some of these texts contributed to the birth of the new Renaissance philosophy.