Orsanmichele

This is the strangest church in Florence, and that's because it wasn't built as a church at all. Orsanmichele started life in 1336 as a grain market — an open loggia where Florence stored and traded its most vital commodity. The arches were walled up between 1380 and 1404 to convert it into a church, but the building never lost its boxy, warehouse-like exterior. It looks nothing like a church from the outside, which is exactly why most tourists walk past it without a second glance.

Their loss. The exterior walls became an extraordinary public sculpture gallery when the city's powerful trade guilds were each assigned a niche to fill with a statue of their patron saint. The wool merchants got Ghiberti to cast Saint Stephen; the linen makers hired Donatello for Saint Mark; the armorers got Donatello's electrifying Saint George. Each guild tried to outdo the others, and the richest — wool, banking, silk — chose expensive bronze over marble, spending ten times as much to demonstrate their wealth. The result was a competitive masterclass that pushed Renaissance sculpture forward in real time.

The original statues have mostly been moved inside to the museum on the upper floors, but the niches still tell the story of a city run by craftsmen and merchants, not kings. The interior houses a magnificent Gothic tabernacle by Andrea Orcagna, encrusted with lapis lazuli, gold, and colored glass, built to house a miraculous painting of the Madonna.

The upper floors, which served as the city's emergency grain storage, offer some of the best views in Florence — and far fewer crowds than any comparable viewpoint.