Church of Santa Margherita dei Cerchi

Piazza dei Giuochi. (Open Map)
(75)

Description

The Chiesa di Santa Margherita de' Cerchi is an ancient church dedicated to Margaret the Virgin in the centre of Florence, Italy. It is first recorded in 1032 and is said, contentiously, to have been the location of Dante's marriage to Gemma Donati in 1285 or 1290. It was certainly the Donati family's parish church and also contains several tombs of the Portinari family, to which Dante's great love Beatrice Portinari belonged, including Monna Tessa, her nursemaid. The church contains a fine altarpiece of the Madonna and Four Saints by Neri di Bicci. Visitors may write letters to Beatrice to ask her to fix their love lives, leaving the letters in a basket next to her shrine.