A Guide to Michelangelo’s Architecture in Florence and Rome
Even if he’d never picked up a chisel or paintbrush, Michelangelo Buonarroti would be famous as an architect. Without any formal training in architecture, he brought a fresh perspective to the field – even as he managed to pick up a remarkable amount of engineering skills along the way. His buildings more or less single-handedly ushered in an eclectic new style often referred to as Mannerism. Where Renaissance architecture promoted harmony, Michelangelo used unexpected juxtapositions and contrasting sizes to create tension.
His dome for St. Peter’s Basilica has reigned over Rome’s skyline for nearly 500 years. In the Piazza del Campidoglio, he shifted the symbolic Umbilicus Urbis (“World’s Navel”) from the Forum to the Capitoline Hill with breathtaking ease. His additions to Florence’s San Lorenzo complex played with architectural forms in radically new ways. Their dynamism opened the door to the Baroque and continues to influence cities today.
Nevertheless, between the David and the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s architecture too often gets overlooked. The artist himself didn’t help matters by destroying most of his preparatory drawings and models prior to his death. We’ve put together a guide to Michelangelo’s architecture, in the hopes of helping non-scholars discover his remarkable designs. All sites are marked on our Google maps of Florence and Rome.
Michelangelo’s Approach to Architecture
Michelangelo’s Architecture in Florence:
New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) at San Lorenzo
Laurentian Library
Other projects in Florence: San Lorenzo facade, fortifications, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi windows
Michelangelo’s Architecture in Rome:
Piazza del Campidoglio
St. Peter’s Basilica & Dome
Santa Maria degli Angeli
Porta Pia
Palazzo Farnese & Arco dei Farnese (Farnese Arch)
Other projects in Rome: Sforza Chapel, San Giovanni Fiorentini, Tor San Michele
Michelangelo’s Approach to Architecture
When one of the greatest sculptors in the world turns his hand to architecture, one might expect walls teeming with carvings. Instead, Michelangelo often treated the entire building as a work of sculpture, upending conventions so freely as to transform their very purpose.
Laurentian Library vestibule and a study for the Porta Pia
Michelangelo claimed that architecture is based on an understanding of the human body. His anatomical studies included investigating how various parts worked together, and he applied the same approach to his building designs. While other architects often worked on components in isolation, Michelangelo layered sketches on top of each other to see the connections between different systems.
Michelangelo’s contemporaries called him terribilità for his ability to evoke a terrifying sense of the sublime. Beyond the traditional Christian ideals he often portrayed, Michelangelo’s work has a broader spiritual power. In his quest to uncover the soul of each piece of stone, he brought life to everything he created. His architecture, like his sculpture and paintings, seems to pulsate with energy. Applied on a monumental scale, the results are beautiful and often strange.
Michelangelo’s Architecture in Florence
New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) at San Lorenzo
By 1519, Brunelleschi’s Old Sacristy in the San Lorenzo church was no longer adequate for the growing Medici clan. Cardinal Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici commissioned 44 year-old Michelangelo to create a second mausoleum for his powerful family.
Although he never finished it, Michelangelo used the New Sacristy project to push the boundaries of Renaissance architecture and sculpture. On top, he paid homage to Brunelleschi with a dome which seems to float above the circles in each corner. Instead of radiating ribs, however, Michelangelo added a coffered ceiling like Rome’s Pantheon. Below, he maintained the stark grey-and-white palette but expanded into a wild array of forms and finishes.
The chapel features just about every kind of classical accent with no regard for rules, such as the framed-but-blank niches. Sculptures seem to burst from the wall and even the thinkers seem active. The figures sprawling on the curved sarcophagi are so highly polished that they look ready to slide right off, especially contrasted against the matte, static wall. Meanwhile, dramatic spirals and swooping curves already presage the Baroque.
If the official website doesn’t load, check the Medici Chapels page on Florence’s tourism portal for visiting information.
Laurentian Library
Other than its towering height, the Laurentian Library vestibule may not immediately strike most visitors as exceptional. There are no windows, and the only color comes from the floor of simple terracotta tiles. Plain white walls and a matte, dark grey stone (known locally as pietra serena, or serene stone) continue the local Renaissance tradition of minimalism. In this case, first impressions can be deceiving: every element is just a little bit off. Curving volutes are blown up to nearly human size, while miniature heads peep out from the tops of pilasters (embedded columns). The stark space features blank niches where sculptures should be, while the monumental staircase feels all out of proportion to the constrained room. It’s been compared to a lava flow more than once, oozing down from the upper level reading room. In typical Michelangelo fashion the design is rife with contradictory elements, like the way each step’s sweeping curve ends in a funny little spiral.
The Reading Room, by contrast, feels warm and harmonious. Although he incorporated the same materials and forms as the vestibule, Michelangelo added plenty of light and wood. He designed the desks to line up with the structural bays to create a sense of rhythm. Even the floor and ceiling motifs of Roman-style ox skulls and theater masks mirror one another.
The vestibule and reading hall sit next to the San Lorenzo church, but with a separate entrance. Limited opening hours make the site feel like a secret pilgrimage rather than another Florentine blockbuster. See the website for visiting information.
Other Projects in Florence
Michelangelo’s first architectural commission was to create a new facade for the San Lorenzo church, which had been rebuilt by Brunelleschi. Unfortunately, continual funding problems prevented construction. Michelangelo left the project in 1519, leaving the large wooden model now displayed in the Casa Buonarroti.
Like most of his contemporaries, Michelangelo worked on military structures – and in fact was appointed supervisor of Florence’s fortifications during the city’s battles against Papal forces in the late 1530’s. Although any physical remains of his defensive projects have long since disappeared, the Casa Buonarroti holds some innovative drawings.
Along with his other work for the Medicis, Michelangelo designed the influential ground floor windows for the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. When the original open loggia was filled in, he added openings with distinctive frames. The curving volutes which appear to support the sill inspired the nickname “kneeling windows”.
Michelangelo’s Architecture in Rome
Piazza del Campidoglio
The piazza atop the Capitoline Hill feels like the center of the world.; everything converges on Michelangelo’s oval. Ancient Romans measured all distances from the Umbilicus Urbis (literally “navel of the world”) in the original Forum, right at the foot of the sacred Capitoline. When the Empire collapsed, the city’s heart shifted north to the Campo Marzio. The Forum was abandoned, while the old hilltop temples were replaced with a market space. In 1538 the Pope asked Michelangelo to renovate the area between the two peaks, where a pair of medieval administration buildings had grown dilapidated. The resulting piazza connects Rome’s past, present, and future, both literally and symbolically.
Instead of seeing the odd angle between the existing buildings as a liability, Michelangelo turned it into an asset. He mirrored the angle with the addition of a third building (the Palazzo Nuovo) to match the Palazzo dei Conservatori, creating a U-shaped cluster facing towards St. Peter’s and the new city center. The not-quite-square shape feels dynamic without looking like it’s trying too hard, just as the trio of structures suggest an enclosed area without actually touching.
Michelangelo shifted the bell tower of the Senate House to reinforce the site’s symmetry but otherwise left the old building largely intact. Meanwhile, he clad the other two facades in timeless Roman travertine, using giant pilasters which ran all the way from the ground to the roof. This so-called Giant Order quickly became a key element of architectural design.
Astonishingly, Michelangelo’s paving pattern wasn’t implemented until 1940. The starry oval is set down a few steps from its surroundings but rises imperceptibly to the center, where the artist personally designed the base for the equestrian statue (the only one from antiquity to survive intact). He supervised placement of the piazza’s other relics, including the large Castor and Pollux: ancient Roman copies of Greek sculptures, now set to face towards St. Peter’s and the future.
Saint Peter’s Basilica & Dome
Work on an enormous new St. Peter’s Basilica had been underway for a century by the time the Pope brought in Michelangelo. By then multiple architects had contributed to the plans – sometimes incompatibly – and the difficulty of funding such an ambitious project contributed to the chaos. Michelangelo himself was in his seventies, and had to figure out how to engineer the largest masonry dome ever built on the fly.
He relied largely on Brunelleschi’s two-shell design for the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, famously stating that his own version might be “bigger, but not more beautiful.” Michelangelo’s alterations included doubling the number of ribs from eight to sixteen and smoothing the profile from an octagon to a circle. Along with the use of lead sheathing instead of terracotta tiles, the changes gave the new dome a less medieval look than Brunelleschi’s structure. Ultimately it was Michelangelo’s design for St. Peter’s which would become the template for Western domes for centuries.
By the time Michelangelo took over the project, construction had begun on the four enormous piers underneath the dome. He adapted the design for the main body of the church, preserving Bramante’s centrally-oriented Greek cross plan but making the forms more muscular. By adding pilasters and other projections at all the corners, he fused complex outlines into a single, rippling mass. Unfortunately, Michelangelo’s contributions to the basilica were obscured when a long nave and new facade were added to the front.
See the website for visiting information.
Santa Maria degli Angeli & Michelangelo Cloister
Towards the end of his life, Michelangelo was commissioned to transform the ancient Baths of Diocletian into a church. Besides the need to balance Rome’s pagan and Christian incarnations, the project also posed a formidable challenge on a physical level. Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs) would occupy only a portion of the gargantuan complex’s footprint, but had to feel equally monumental.
Michelangelo’s esteem for classical architecture encouraged him to create an unorthodox basilica layout. The bath’s enormous elongated frigidarium (cold room) was a natural choice for a nave, except that it didn’t have an entry on the end. Instead of cutting into the existing structure, Michelangelo preserved the original sequence of spaces. Visitors enter through the remains of the caldarium (hot room), passing through a domed vestibule (formerly the tepidarium) to access the main church from the side. Changes in Rome’s street level forced him to raise the floor and truncate the 28-meter columns. A later renovation attempted to create a more orthodox layout by carving an apse across from the vestibule. Bland frescoes plastering nearly every surface are an unfortunate distraction. See the website for visiting hours.
Michelangelo’s renovation was just one part of a substantial monastic complex, which is now split between the main church (entered from the Piazza della Repubblica) and the National Roman Museum’s Baths of Diocletian branch (accessed around the corner, facing the train station). The museum section includes a large cloister allegedly based on a sketch by Michelangelo. See the website for visiting hours.
Porta Pia
At the end of his life Michelangelo produced his most eccentric design, which introduced the world to theatrical city planning. While his flair for monumentality makes him a natural candidate for a city gate, the Porta Pia defies expectations: instead of strength and solidity, it looks like a cutout or stage backdrop.
The structure’s ancient Roman origins disappear behind a prodigious assemblage of forms – the central portal alone layers straight lines and curves, abstract and representational shapes, and various textures, reliefs, and incisions, all presented in contrasting scales.
The gate is about 15 minutes’ walk from Termini train station.
Palazzo Farnese and Farnese Arch (Arco dei Farnesi)
In 1546 Michelangelo joined the ranks of the century’s most celebrated architects to work on the Farnese family’s properties straddling the Tiber River. He took over construction of the palazzo near the Campo de Fiori, just as the lower two floors were finished. Michelangelo echoed the forces of gravity with a deep cornice, breaking up the flat facade with rich detailing. He also added a colossal coat of arms (the largest ever seen) over the central entry. His unexecuted paving design for the Piazza Farnese extended the building’s spatial units with gridlines: a simple but effective way to integrate the imposing palazzo into the public square.
Michelangelo’s work on the rear portion of the Palazzo Farnese led to increasingly ambitious plans. After adding an outsized trio of arches and avant-garde reliefs to the Via Giulia side, he proposed a visionary (if extravagant) scheme which connected to the Villa Farnesina in Trastevere via a private bridge. However, construction languished after Michelangelo’s death and today only a single, scenic arch spans the Via Giulia. Draped in vines, its monumental scale lends an air of grandeur and mystery to the tranquil street.
Guided tours of the Palazzo Farnese are offered on weekday afternoons.
Other Projects in Rome
After Michelangelo’s death in 1564, his pupils took over construction of the Sforza Chapel in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica. It’s unclear how much they may have altered the design.
Michelangelo’s plans for the San Giovanni dei Fiorentini church were never realized.
Some scholars contend that Michelangelo worked on a defensive system near the coast, including the Tor San Michele. The watchtower-turned-lighthouse near Ostia was restored in 2001.
Further Reading
Michelangelo’s work was a major influence on Robert Venturi, who helped formulate a Post-Modern approach to architecture. His 1962 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture features the Porta Pia on the cover and includes analyses of several Michelangelo buildings.
Visitors to Florence may want to check the latest PDF of opening hours for the major monuments.
For more on Italian architecture, see our posts:
A Complete Guide to Brunelleschi’s Architecture in Florence
Borromini’s Baroque: Rome Beyond the Gilt
Palladio’s Architecture in Venice