Rotonda Brunelleschi

A few steps from Piazza Santissima Annunziata stands the Brunelleschi Rotunda, a restrained building with a long history. Filippo Brunelleschi designed it in the 1430s as a centrally planned building within the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The date 1437 can still be read, carved into its masonry. The rotunda type introduced by Brunelleschi became particularly popular from the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. The building was never finished. A roof was added in the seventeenth century; rooms built above in the nineteenth served as sculptor Enrico Pazzi’s studio. In 1937 Rodolfo Sabatini renovated it following Brunelleschi’s design, seeking to complete the Renaissance structures with a new section in a spare, contemporary style. After various subsequent uses, it has recently become home to the Museo dei Medici.