Museo delle Cappelle Medicee

The Museo delle Cappelle Medicee (Museum of Medici Chapels) is incorporated within the vast complex of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the lavishly decorated former parish church of the neighboring Medici family. Beginning in the mid-15th century with Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, the family chose this site for their burial and commissioned grand funerary monuments and chapels. The museum is especially known for the New Sacristy, designed by Michelangelo for the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici—a masterwork of Renaissance architecture and sculpture. The Chapel of the Princes was begun in the early 17th century to become the mausoleum of the Medici Grand Dukes, and this magnificent octagonal chapel, with its immense dome, is entirely faced with polychrome marble and pietre dure. In 2023, the completion of renovation projects opened up the long-closed Lorraine Crypt, as well as the Secret Room, a narrow, subterranean chamber containing charcoal wall drawings believed to be by Michelangelo, now on view for the first time since their 1975 discovery.