SAN LORENZO, Laurentian Library

Your visit of the San Lorenzo complex continues with the convent. Leave the church and enter the passage that is immediately to the left when facing the façade.

After the entrance hall, next you'll reach the First Cloister, an elegant square-shaped space that has been used as part-garden and part-cemetery for centuries. Let your gaze wander over the arched portico and loggia rising up above it: these elements are also part of Brunelleschi's design, even if they were built about thirty years after his death. On the left you'll find the Second Cloister, which is smaller and has a rectangular shape.

At the back of the First Cloister, a passage takes you to part of the convent that in the first half of the fifteenth century was transformed by Michelangelo to house the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, or Laurentian Library, a prestigious collection of manuscripts that are largely decorated with marvelous miniatures.

Together with the New Sacristy on the opposite side of the complex, the Library marks Michelangelo's new direction, who after creating painting and sculpture masterpieces grew increasingly interested in architecture and proposed a new, intense, and dramatic form of expression. The structure's elements no longer follow Brunelleschi's serene and harmonious rhythm, but seem to conflict each other, as if they're contending for the available space....