The babies above the arches

Above each arch sits a round medallion with a swaddled baby, white against blue, and with that this building tells you exactly what it is for. Nothing like it existed anywhere else.

The silk guild, one of the wealthiest in the city, paid for the construction and covered the costs for centuries. Brunelleschi drew up the gallery in 1419, with arches as tall as they are wide and columns spaced evenly apart, and architects regard this row as the beginning of Renaissance architecture.

On 5 February 1445 the first child arrived, a girl given the name Agata Smeralda. Thousands followed over the centuries, and all that time the house kept a record of who came in, when, and with which object alongside them.

The institution still exists, now working for children and families in difficulty, six hundred years after that first entry.

At the left end of the gallery, by the corner, was the spot where those children were left behind.