CHAPTER XV.
S.Croce An historic piazza--Marble facades--Florence's Westminster Abbey--Galileo's ancestor and Ruskin--Benedetto's pulpit--Michelangelo's tomb--A fond lady--Donatello's Annunciation--Giotto's frescoes--S.

Francis--Donatello magnanimous--The gifted Alberti--Desiderio's great tomb--The sacristy--The Medici chapel--The Pazzi chapel--Old Jacopo desecrated--A Restoration.
The piazza S.Croce now belongs to children.

The church is at one end, bizarre buildings are on either side, the Dante statue is in the middle, and harsh gravel covers the ground.

Everywhere are children, all dirty, and all rather squalid and mostly bow-legged, showing that they were of the wrong age to take their first steps on Holy Saturday at noon.

The long brown building on the right, as we face S.Croce, is a seventeenth-century palazzo.