Orsanmichele (or "Kitchen Garden of St. Michael", from the contraction in Tuscan dialect of the Italian word orto) is a church in the heart of Florence. The building was constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele, now gone.

Orsanmichele

The church was originally built as a grain market in 1337 by Francesco Talenti, Neri di Fioravante, and Benci di Cione.

Between 1380 and 1404 it was converted into a church used as the chapel of Florence's powerful craft and trade guilds.

On the ground floor of the square building are the 13th century arches that originally formed the loggia of the grain market.

The second floor was devoted to offices, while the third housed one of the city's municipal grain storehouses, maintained to withstand famine or siege

Late in the 14th century, the guilds were charged by the city to commission statues of their patron saints to embellish the facades of the church.

Today, all of the original sculptures have been removed and replaced with modern duplicates to protect them from the elements and vandalismSan Luca 1601

Gianbologna (magistrates and notaries)

The facades held 14 architecturally designed external niches, which were filled from 1399 to around 1430.

The facades held 14 architecturally designed external niches, which were filled from 1399 to around 1430. The three richest guilds opted to make their figures in the far more costly bronze, which cost approximately ten times the amount of the stone figures.

Christ and St. Thomas 1467-83Andrea del Verrocchio (merchants)

St. Eligius 1411-15Nanni di Banco (farriers)

Palazzo del Arte dela Lana, a wonderful building near Orsanmichele

Virgin and Child 1399 Simone di Ferrucci (doctors and apothecaries)

St. Peter 1415 Ciuffagni (butchers)

St. John the Evangelist 1514 Baccio da Montelupo (silk merchants)

St. Mark 1411 Donatello (linen-weavers and peddlers)

St. James 1415 Niccolò di Piero Lamberti (furriers)

Inside the church is Andrea Orcagna's bejeweled Gothic Tabernacle (1355-59) encasing a repainting by Bernardo Daddi's of an older icon of the 'Madonna and Child’

Image internet

Sound: Ave Maria – Andrea Bocelli

Text : InternetPictures: Daniela Iacob Arangement: Sanda Foişoreanu