Ospedale degli Innocenti

Reckoned to be the first fully Renaissance building. Brunelleschi built it for the Florentine silk guild as a foundling hospital, and its loggia of nine round arches on Corinthian columns sets out the Renaissance recipe: mathematical proportion and ancient Rome as the model, in the middle of the Gothic period. The blue glazed terracotta roundels with babies in swaddling clothes (Andrea della Robbia, 1487) are its visual signature. It still works as an institution for the protection of children.