Santa Maria Novella Guide: Price, Hours & Alberti's Facade

Santa Maria Novella is Florence's principal Dominican church, sold as one paid ticket covering the Basilica, the Avelli Cemetery, and the Museum (cloisters, Spanish Chapel, and refectory).

Standard admission is €7.50 adult / €5.00 reduced (ages 11-18, with ID). Florence residents, children under 11, disabled visitors and their companions, clergy, school group leaders (one per 15 students), Italian-licensed tour guides, and ICOM/ICOMOS/ICCROM members enter free.

Opening hours vary by day: Monday-Thursday 09:00-17:30; Friday and civil holidays 11:00-17:30; Saturday and days preceding a religious holiday 09:00-17:00; Sunday and religious holidays 13:00-17:00. Last admission is 1 hour before closing. The complex is closed on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Construction of the Dominican church began in 1279, with the Gothic nave largely complete by 1357. Its famous green-and-white marble facade was finished nearly a century later by the Renaissance architect and theorist Leon Battista Alberti in the 1470s, commissioned by the Rucellai family — one of the clearest surviving examples of Alberti's own architectural theory put into built form.

The basilica houses Masaccio's fresco 'The Holy Trinity' (c. 1427), one of the first paintings in Western art to apply mathematically consistent linear perspective, and the Tornabuoni Chapel's fresco cycle by Domenico Ghirlandaio. The Museum's Spanish Chapel (Cappellone degli Spagnoli) contains an extensive 14th-century fresco cycle by Andrea di Bonaiuto.