The Hospital of the Infants was originally an orphanage sponsored by the Silk Guild of Florence, and is a founding example of Italian Renaissance architecture. Fronted with a nine bay loggia facing the Piazza, there is a horizontal rotating wheel where parents could anonymously leave their child until its closing in 1875. The building is based on Italian Romanesque and late Gothic styles, its round columns with capitals of the Composite Order and impost blocks each have a ceramic tondo above. Circular arches and a segmented spherical dome behind, the grey sone is set off against the white walls ("pietra sienns"). Proportional logic of symmetric geometry, as so evident here, was to become an important Renaissance element.

Written by  George Monkhouse.

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