This incredibly precious library has a story of vanity behind its making: the Medicis wanted to show that they were more than mere merchants, but also evolved intellectual. Because it’s place in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze, Michelangelo designed the library and it was completed by others in 1575. Highlights are:

• The Mannerism style of architecture.
• The vestibule.
• The elegant staircase that divides into three.
• The design that makes it impossible to determine to the viewer whether the building is held up by columns or walls.

Priceless works contained are such as:

• Nahuatl Florentine Codex on pre-Conquest Aztec life;
• sixth-century Syriac Rabula Gospels;
• the Codex Amiatinus, earliest surviving manuscript of the Latin Vulgate Bible;
• the Squarcialupi Codex, early musical manuscript;
• Erinna papyrus poems’by Sappho’s friend.

• Bus C2 stop Republica
• Bus 6 and 11 stop Vecchietti

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