Basilica of Santa Maria Novella

Basilica of Santa Maria Novella Basilica di Santa Maria Novella (Italian)
The façade of Santa Maria Novella, completed by Leon Battista Alberti in 1470.
Basic information
Location	Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Geographic coordinates	43°46′29″N 11°14′57″E / 43.7746°N 11.2493°E / 43.7746; 11.2493Coordinates: 43°46′29″N 11°14′57″E / 43.7746°N 11.2493°E / 43.7746; 11.2493
Affiliation	Roman Catholic
District	Archdiocese of Florence
Year consecrated	1420
Ecclesiastical or organizational status	Minor basilica
Architectural description
Architectural type	Church
Architectural style	Gothic-Renaissance
Groundbreaking	1279
Completed	14th century

Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated just across from the main railway station named after it. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church.

The church, the adjoining cloister, and chapter house contain a multiplicity of art treasures and funerary monuments. Especially famous are frescoes by masters of Gothic and early Renaissance. They were financed by the most important Florentine families, who ensured themselves funerary chapels on consecrated ground.

This church was called Novella (New) because it was built on the site of the 9th-century oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne. When the site was assigned to Dominican Order in 1221, they decided to build a new church and adjoining cloister. The church was designed by two Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi. Building began in the mid-13th century (about 1246), and was finished about 1360 under the supervision of Friar Iacopo Talenti with the completion of the Romanesque-Gothic bell tower and sacristy. At that time, only the lower part of the Tuscan gothic façade was finished. The three portals are spanned by round arches, while the rest of the lower part of the facade is spanned by blind arches, separated by pilasters, with below Gothic pointed arches, striped in green and white, capping tombs of the nobility. This same design continues in the adjoining wall around the old churchyard. The church was consecrated in 1420.

On a commission from Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, a local textile merchant, Leon Battista Alberti designed the upper part of the inlaid green marble of Prato, also called "serpentino" and white marble façade of the church (1456–1470). He was already famous as the architect of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, but even more for his seminal treatise on architecture De Re Aedificatoria, based on the book De Architectura of the classical Roman writer Vitruvius. Alberti had also designed the façade for the Rucellai Palace in Florence.