Santa Maria Novella: the facade and the old pharmacy
A geometer's marble facade, the friars' eight-century pharmacy, and the streets down to the Arno. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Piazza Santa Maria Novella
Start in the broad square the Dominicans laid out for preaching, with the two stone obelisks that once marked the turning posts of a Medici chariot race run around them. Stand at the far end first — the facade reads as one whole composition only from a distance.

2. Basilica di Santa Maria Novella
The green-and-white marble front Leon Battista Alberti finished in 1470 — he tied the wide lower church to the narrow upper with two great scrolls, a fix so elegant every later facade borrowed it. Go in for Masaccio's *Trinity*, the first painting to use true vanishing-point perspective. Ticketed; the cloisters are part of it.

3. Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
Round to Via della Scala for the friars' pharmacy, working since the 1200s and selling since 1612 — frescoed sales rooms, rose water and *acqua di colonia* still mixed to old recipes. You don't have to buy; walk through the vaulted halls as the small free museum they effectively are. Closes for the afternoon break, so time it.

4. Via dei Fossi
Head south down the antique-dealers' street — *Via dei Fossi*, lined with framers, restorers and gilt-mirror shops, the quiet trade end of the quarter. Window-shop the length of it; it runs almost straight toward the river.

5. Piazza Goldoni and the Lungarno
Out at the river by the playwright's statue, then left along the *Lungarno* embankment. The water opens the view that the tight streets keep from you — the hills of the *Oltrarno* across the Arno, the bridges strung downstream. Walk slowly along the parapet.

6. Ponte Santa Trinita
End on the elegant three-arch bridge — the one rebuilt stone by stone after 1944 from fragments dredged from the river, the original curves so subtle nobody could draw them. Stand at the middle for the best framed view of the Ponte Vecchio upstream, gold in the late light. Buses run from the far bank.

Santa Maria Novella: the facade and the old pharmacy