San Lorenzo is the Medici's home turf, and the walk reads their whole story in three buildings and a market — the church they prayed in, the chapels they're buried in, the palace they ran the city from, all wrapped in a food hall and a street bazaar. Two and a half kilometres; it works in rain because the market is roofed.
Start at the basilica, its facade left bare brick because Michelangelo's marble front was never built — the family's grandest unfinished business. Round the back to the Cappelle Medicee for Michelangelo's reclining figures over the tombs. Then the Mercato Centrale: the ground floor for the real market and a lampredotto (tripe sandwich) eaten standing, the 2014 upper hall for bistecca and wine under the original iron roof.
Out into the San Lorenzo street market — colour and hard bargaining, more spectacle than shop — and end at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the palace that set the Renaissance template, where Gozzoli's Magi wind through a painted Tuscany. The Duomo is two minutes east.
