o del Calcio was played, it is altogether spoiled and ruined, not
only by the dishonouring statue of Dante, which for some unexplained
reason has here found a resting-place, but by the crude and staring
facade of the church itself, a pretentious work of modern Italy, which
lends to what was of old the gayest Piazza in the city, the very aspect
of a cemetery.

Not long before the end of the thirteenth century, a little shrine of
St. Anthony stood where now we may see the great Church of S. Croce, in
the midst of the marshes, as it is said, that waste land which in the
Middle Age seems to have surrounded every city in Italy. It belonged, as
did the land round about, to a certain family called Altafronte, who
appear to have presented it to the friars of the neighbouring convent of
Franciscans just outside Porta S. Gallo. St. Francis being dead, and the
strictness of his rule relaxed, the first stone of the great Church of
S. Croce was laid on Holy Cross Day, 1297. Arnolfo, the architect of the
Duomo, was the first builder here, till later Giotto was appointed. The
church itself is in the form of a tau cross, the eastern end on both
sides of the choir consisting of twelve chapels scarcely less deep than
the choir and tiny apse, itself a chapel of St. Anthony. The wide and
spacious nave, with two aisles, could doubtless hold half the city, as
perhaps it did when Fra Francesco of Montepulciano preached here in the
early years of the sixteenth century just after the death of Savonarola.
And indeed the very real beauty of the church consists in just that
splendour of space and light which so few seem to have cared for, but
which seems to me certainly in Italy the most precious thing in the
world. And then S. Croce is really the Pantheon, as it were, of the
city; the golden twilight of S. Maria Novella even would seem too gloomy
for the resting-place of heroes. Already before the sixteenth century it
had been here that Florence had set up the banners of those she
delighted to honour. And though Cosimo I destroyed them when he let
Vasari so unfortunately have his way with the church, some remembrance
of the glory that of old hung about her seems to have lingered, for here
Michelangelo was buried, under a heavy monument by Vasari, and close by
Vittorio Alfieri lies in a tomb carved by Canova at the request of the
Duchess of Albany. Not far away you come upon the grave of Niccolo
Machiavelli, the statesman, and beside it the monumen