The hole in the wall

Two centuries are packed into this facade: along the bottom the gothic bands of the Dominicans, up top the work of Alberti, who tied the lower half to the upper with two big scrolls. To the right of the door sit two marble instruments from the sixteenth century, which a friar used to measure the position of the sun and to establish that the calendar had drifted, a finding that fed into the reform that gave Europe the dating system we still use today.

Inside, on the left of the nave, hangs the piece you buy the ticket for. Around 1427 Masaccio painted a Trinity here in which the mathematics of perspective comes out fully right for the first time, so that the flat wall seems to be a vaulted chapel going metres back into the stone. People at the time walked up to it expecting to find a hole in the wall.

Below the scene lies a painted skeleton, and above it the line saying that it once was what you are now and that you will become what it is now. The church charges admission, closes for a couple of hours around midday, and expects covered shoulders.

This is where our walk ends, and thanks for coming along. If you want to see more of the city you can carry on with our walk through Oltrarno past the workshops, or with the one about the water of 1966. The starting point at the Duomo is seven minutes from here along Via dei Cerretani, which you pick up on the east side of the square.