San Lorenzo: the Medici church and the market
The Medici's own church, a cast-iron food hall, and the street-market grid that wraps them both. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Basilica di San Lorenzo
Start at the Medici parish church — and the reason its facade is bare brick: Michelangelo designed a marble front that was never built, so the rough wall is the family's most famous unfinished business. Brunelleschi designed the inside; go in for the calm grey-and-white nave, or just take the strange blank face from the *piazza*.

2. Cappelle Medicee
Round the back for the Medici Chapels — the domed Chapel of the Princes lined floor to ceiling in inlaid hard stone, and the New Sacristy with Michelangelo's *Dawn*, *Dusk*, *Night* and *Day* draped over the tombs. Ticketed and separate from the church; the sculpture alone is worth the entry.

3. Mercato Centrale — ground floor
The cast-iron-and-glass market hall Giuseppe Mengoni built in 1874, the same architect as Milan's glass arcade. The ground floor is the real food market — butchers, fishmongers, the *trippaio* stalls selling *lampredotto* (the tripe sandwich Florence eats standing up). Buy the panino, eat it on your feet, the way it's done.

4. Mercato Centrale — upper floor
Climb to the mezzanine food hall that opened in 2014 under the restored iron roof — counters of pasta, *bistecca*, pizza and wine, open late when the ground floor has shut. Lighter on locals, heavier on visitors, but the ironwork overhead is the original and worth the look up.

5. San Lorenzo street market
Out into the open-air grid along Via dell'Ariento and the side lanes — leather jackets, belts and scarves stacked on stalls. Bargaining is expected and most of the leather isn't what it claims; treat it as a walk through colour rather than a shopping trip, and keep a hand on your bag.

6. Palazzo Medici Riccardi
End at the family's first palace, the template every Renaissance palazzo copied — rusticated stone below, smooth above. Pay in for the tiny Chapel of the Magi and Gozzoli's wraparound fresco of the three kings winding through a Tuscan landscape, Medici faces hidden in the procession. Then it's two minutes to the Duomo.

San Lorenzo: the Medici church and the market