For over three centuries, the Medici buried their dead at San Lorenzo, and each generation changed how that burial looked. Bankers chose a modest sacristy, popes hired Michelangelo, and grand dukes built a dome of coloured stone. This guide follows that story from Brunelleschi’s Old Sacristy to the scientists who reopened the Medici tombs in 2004.
The Medici Chapels sit at the back of San Lorenzo because this was the family’s parish church. They paid for its rebuilding, worshipped there and were buried there long before they ruled Tuscany as dukes.
Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, founder of the family bank, paid for Brunelleschi’s Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo. When he died in 1429, he was buried beneath its central table: a private family chapel, not yet a monument to power.
Cosimo de’ Medici, honoured after his death as Pater Patriae (“Father of his Country”), was buried in the crypt beneath the basilica’s high altar. Donatello, the sculptor he had supported, was later buried nearby.
Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, died in 1516 and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, in 1519. These were the family’s hopes for a secular dynasty. Their cousin Giulio and uncle Pope Leo X decided they needed a new burial chapel.
Michelangelo had been hired to build a marble façade for San Lorenzo, but the contract was cancelled in 1520. San Lorenzo’s brick front is still bare today. He moved inside to the sacristy and, later, the Laurentian Library.
The museum combines three layers: the grand-ducal crypt (17th–18th century), the Chapel of the Princes (begun 1604) and Michelangelo’s New Sacristy (1519–1534). They were built by different generations with different ideas of what a Medici should look like in death.
The complex took more than 300 years to build. Wars, murders, a failed plan to obtain a holy relic and the end of a dynasty all left their mark.
The New Sacristy was Michelangelo’s first architectural project. He designed the walls, doors, windows and tombs as one system, and the dome was vaulted by 1524. Early drawings show he first planned a free-standing tomb in the middle of the room.
In 1527 the Medici were expelled from Florence and the Republic restored. Michelangelo sided with the Republic and was put in charge of the city’s fortifications during the siege of 1529–1530. After the Medici returned, he is thought to have hidden for some time in a small room beneath the sacristy.
Michelangelo left for Rome in 1534 and never returned to Florence. Statues lay unfinished on the sacristy floor. Some figures, including Day, still show the rough marks of his claw chisel.
Alessandro de’ Medici, first Duke of Florence and presumed son of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, was assassinated by his cousin Lorenzino in 1537. His body was placed hastily in his father’s sarcophagus in the New Sacristy.
Under Duke Cosimo I, Niccolò Tribolo installed the statues in 1545. Giorgio Vasari and Bartolomeo Ammannati completed the room by 1555, with Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo carving the saints beside the Madonna.
Grand Duke Ferdinando I founded the grand-ducal hardstone workshop, today’s Opificio delle Pietre Dure, partly to produce the inlays for a new family mausoleum. Its craftsmen spent generations cutting stone for it.
Cosimo I had dreamed of a grand mausoleum, and Ferdinando I began it in 1604, with Matteo Nigetti directing work from a design by Don Giovanni de’ Medici. The centre was meant to hold Christ’s tomb from Jerusalem. Attempts to buy or remove it failed, so the space stayed empty.
Gian Gastone died in 1737 without an heir, and Tuscany passed to the House of Lorraine. His sister, Anna Maria Luisa, signed the Family Pact that kept the Medici art collections in Florence for ever. She died in 1743, the last of the family buried in the crypt.
Craftsmen sawed hardstones such as jasper, lapis lazuli and chalcedony into thin slices and fitted them so tightly that the joins almost disappear.
Placing the Holy Sepulchre at the centre would have made a family tomb into a pilgrimage site. The plan shows how far the grand dukes’ ambitions reached.
The red balls on a gold shield recur throughout the chapels, from inlaid floors to tomb decoration. Their origin has never been firmly explained.
The two great rooms were built about 85 years apart and deliberately do not match. One uses grey stone and white marble; the other uses every colour the grand-ducal workshop could cut.
Michelangelo kept Brunelleschi’s grey pietra serena framework but filled the walls with white marble doors, niches and tombs that seem to press against it. Light falls from high windows and a coffered dome.
The Chapel of the Princes is an octagon with a dome about 59 metres high, among the largest in Florence. Its walls are covered with marble and hardstone, with the arms of the Tuscan cities under Medici rule along the base.
The New Sacristy holds the two dukes on their wall tombs: Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, who shares his sarcophagus with Alessandro. Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, murdered in the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, rest in the plain tomb beneath Michelangelo’s Madonna. Michelangelo had designed a grand monument for them, but it was never built.
The grand dukes from Cosimo I to Gian Gastone, with their wives and children, lie in the crypt below the Chapel of the Princes. Their great sarcophagi upstairs are empty. A separate Lorraine crypt holds members of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, who ruled Tuscany after the Medici.
The two dukes are idealised: Michelangelo reportedly said that in a thousand years no one would know what they really looked like. Giuliano sits upright with a commander’s baton, while Lorenzo rests his chin on his hand in thought. Together they suggest the active and the contemplative life.
The Medici Chapels are also a site of scientific research. Two recent projects have told us more about the family and the marble than any document.
In 2004, paleopathologists led by Gino Fornaciari of the University of Pisa were allowed to study the remains of dozens of Medici buried at San Lorenzo, including Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo.
Working with Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), restorers used selected non-harmful bacteria to clean the tombs of the two dukes. The microbes digested old glue, oil and phosphate deposits without touching the marble.
The building’s story did not stop when the family died out. These later moments explain the museum you visit today.
Once you know the story, small details become clues. Look for these as you move from the crypt to the New Sacristy.
In the crypt, find the last Medici. Remember that much of what you saw at the Uffizi stayed in Florence because of her.
In the Chapel of the Princes, stand under the dome and picture the Holy Sepulchre that was never brought from Jerusalem.
Look down: the family shield is inlaid in the floor, cut by the workshop founded for this chapel.
In the New Sacristy, compare the rough head of Day with the polished body. It is a record of the day Michelangelo left.
Below the thoughtful Lorenzo, remember that the sarcophagus also holds Alessandro, murdered in 1537.
Look up at the windows below the dome: they narrow towards the top, making the room seem taller than it is.
The museum is run by the Musei del Bargello. Check the official site for the latest hours and prices before visiting.
At the back of San Lorenzo, not through the basilica. The route starts in the crypt; a lift links it to the upper floor.
Closed on Mondays. Last tickets are sold 40 minutes before closing, so arrive by about 18:00.
Plus €3 for online booking. The Secret Room is reservation-only with a combined ticket.
Short answers to the history questions visitors ask most often.
Michelangelo designed the New Sacristy (1519–1534). The Chapel of the Princes was begun in 1604 by Matteo Nigetti for Grand Duke Ferdinando I, from a design by Don Giovanni de’ Medici.
Yes. He and his brother Giuliano lie in the simple tomb beneath Michelangelo’s Madonna in the New Sacristy, not in the grand tomb with the seated duke.
Its centre was meant to hold the Holy Sepulchre from Jerusalem. Attempts to obtain it failed.
After siding with the Republic against the Medici in 1527–1530, he left Florence for Rome in 1534 and never returned. Others installed his statues in 1545.
In 1869, when they were declared a national monument and became a state museum. Since 2014 they have been part of the Musei del Bargello.
Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, who died in 1743. Her brother Gian Gastone, who died in 1737, was the last Medici grand duke.
Begin with the last Medici in the crypt. Stand beneath the empty centre of the Chapel of the Princes, then finish in Michelangelo’s New Sacristy, where a murdered duke, an unfinished face and a fugitive artist are all part of the story.
Images via Wikimedia Commons: Chapel of the Princes and the Medici arms by Richard Mortel (CC BY 2.0); Old Sacristy by Miguel Hermoso Cuesta (CC BY-SA 4.0); tomb of Lorenzo by Rufus46 (CC BY-SA 3.0); crypt by Francesco Bini (CC BY-SA 4.0); Night by George M. Groutas (CC BY 2.0).
