Baptistery of St. John

This guide to the Baptistery of St. John in Florence opens in 1402, when thirty-four judges deadlocked over a competition between two goldsmiths, Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti, each casting a bronze panel of Abraham and Isaac for the right to build the doors. It follows what Brunelleschi did after refusing to share the commission, and the decades Ghiberti went on to spend on these doors and the ones that followed, panels Michelangelo would later praise. Step inside and look up at the mosaic ceiling overhead while you listen.