751. That’s how many years have passed since Dante Alighieri was baptised in Florence’s Baptistery of San Giovanni on March 26, 1266. In his ‘Divine Comedy’, Dante described the building as “my beautiful San Giovanni,” yet he was not the only famous Florentine to be baptised here. Navigator Amerigo Vespucci, historian and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli and Grand Duke Cosimo I de Medici are all believed to have been dunked in the building’s original marble font. In fact, until the end of the 1800s, the baptisms of all Christian Florentines took place under its mosaicked ceiling.
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