In preparation for the International Year or Astronomy,
restorations are underway to get Santa Croce in perfect form before hosting the
celebration.
Astronomers, scientists and intellectuals from across the
globe will flock to Florence in 2009 to gather in the place where Catholicism
and the sciences, faith and reason have converged for centuries. The most
important restoration efforts will be carried out on the church’s roof and the
ceiling fresco in the Cappella dei Pazzi.
Located above the central altar, the fresco shows the
constellations above Florence exactly as they were in the mid-fourteenth
century, when the large mural was painted.
