Badia Fiorentina - Monastero

The Badia Fiorentina displays a slender, hexagonal bell tower that rises sharply above the surrounding rooftops. Founded in nine hundred seventy-eight by Willa of Tuscany to honor her late husband, the abbey became the social heart of Florence for centuries. Dante Alighieri lived nearby and heard the monks chanting from these walls, later referencing the abbey in his Divine Comedy. The building shifted shape through several reconstructions, but that original foundation by a grieving widow remains the reason it stands here today.