Piazza Santo Spirito

This guide to Piazza Santo Spirito in Florence follows a teenage Michelangelo Buonarroti, newly without his patron Lorenzo de' Medici, taken in by the Augustinian friars whose monastery behind the basilica ran a hospital for the poor. It covers the extraordinary offer the prior made him and the wooden crucifix he carved for the high altar in thanks, plus the centuries the piece spent unrecognized before scholars traced it back to him. Step into the basilica's octagonal sacristy to see where it hangs today.