The Medici chapels

The Medici Chapels are located behind the Basilica of San Lorenzo and are closely linked to the history of the Medici family.

Today the Medici Chapels are an independent museum in all respects, although they were originally an extension of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. This State museum includes rooms such as the New Sacristy and the Chapel of the Princes. Here are found the tombs of the members of the Medici family, who began to use San Lorenzo as a burial place with the death of Cosimo de' Medici in 1464. With some exceptions, all the Medicis were buried here, including the last Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone de' Medici, who died in Florence on 9 July 1737. Even the successors, the Lorraine family, were buried in San Lorenzo to continue the Medici tradition.

Inside the Medici Chapels it is possible to visit the New Sacristy designed and built by Michelangelo at different times, between the years 1520 and 1534. The chapel was commissioned by Pope Leo X to give a princely burial to his father Lorenzo the Magnificent and to his uncle Giuliano. Pope Clement VII later expanded its use by assigning the tombs to two offsprings of the family, Giuliano duke of Nemours and Lorenzo duke of Urbino. Michelangelo, starting from the plan of the old Medici sacristy designed by Brunelleschi,  conceived a more monumental and complex space in which he created the two funeral monuments. The theme of the entire chapel is "Time which devours all things" for which Michelangelo identifies the times of day and illustrates them in 4 statues: Day and Night for Giuliano de’ Medici's tomb, while for Lorenzo's tomb he sculpts Twilight and Dawn. Both Lorenzo and Giuliano’s statues located over the times of the day, look towards the Medici Madonna.

Inside the complex of the Medici Chapels is the Cappella dei Principi (Princes’ Chapel), a sumptuous large octagonal space surmounted by the dome of San Lorenzo which reaches a height of 193.50 feet. The idea was initially conceived by Cosimo I, but it was his son Ferdinando I who carried out the sumptuous project. The project was of a chapel entirely covered with inlays of precious and semiprecious hard stones worked according to the Florentine commesso hard stone mosaic technique. For the realization of this grandiose work, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure was founded, and it is still today an excellence in the field of working with exquisite materials.