Founded in 979 by the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, the woman who also granted the city its liberty upon her death, the Badia Fiorentina (Florentine Abbey) is among the city’s oldest institutions built just as Florence emerged from the Dark Ages. Except for the Romanesque campanile (bell tower), today’s church is largely a Renaissance construct, with a splendid coffered ceiling and Filippino Lippi’s Apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard to your left as you enter through the small cloister. It is here that Dante watched Beatrice at her prayers in the 1270s. The church is open to visitors three hours a week. Otherwise it is reserved for prayer and meditation.
