Like the Sistine Chapel? You’ll Love These

There’s nothing like Michelangelo’s world-famous frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. But as special as the Sistine Chapel is, it isn’t the only architectural space in Italy where you can find jaw-droppingly vibrant, detailed, and beautiful, not to mention art-history-changing, frescoes.

Here, four of our favorite spaces in Italy to add to your list (some even influenced Michelangelo himself!). Bonus: Each of them is in a town that’s well worth a visit in its own right.

Note: When visiting these incredible spaces, just remember that what damages fresco more than anything else is moisture and humidity! So don’t stand too close to the art (your breath really does make a difference!), and please, never, ever touch the artwork. That way, your children and their children will be able to enjoy these beautiful masterpieces, too!

Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

Located an easy 25- or 45-minute train ride from Venice, Padua has a lot to boast about: mythical ties to the city of Troy, the second-oldest university in Italy (and one where Galileo taught)… and an incredible 14th-century chapel that’s one of Italy’s top sites for pilgrims. Art history pilgrims, that is.

The chapel was built by Enrico Scrovegni in 1302, after his father’s practice of lending out money at super-high interest rates — something seen as so sinful, it landed the man in Dante’s Inferno — filled him with such guilt he built a chapel with the family’s earnings. (He dedicated it to to the “Virgin of Charity”).

Scrovegni commissioned the Florentine painter Giotto for the frescoes. The result is the earliest work that’s accepted as being by Giotto’s own hand. For art historians, that means it’s the keystone for deciding if later pieces (like those in the Basilica of San Francesco, below) were by Giotto, too. Like Michelangelo more than two centuries later, Giotto had to grapple with how to lay his fresco cycle out on a barrel-vaulted building. And, like Michelangelo, it’s fair to say he did, well, a pretty good job!

The whole story of the New Testament is laid out here, starting with the heartbreaking Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple. The panel shows Joachim, the Virgin’s father, being literally pushed out of the temple by a priest, Joachim’s offering rejected because he remains childless; the anguish on Joachim’s face is palpable.

The narrative continues through to Christ’s life, with the famous frescoes of the Lamentation and Kiss of Judas.

Don’t miss the Last Judgment, either, a fantasy of all the horrific tortures that await the damned. Few paintings in art history could be more frightening! This was one piece that influenced Michelangelo for his own version of the Last Judgment.

In all of the frescoes, you can see just why Giotto was so groundbreaking, he’s known as one of the fathers of the Renaissance. Giotto’s use of space and volume, and his two-point perspective scheme (which unites both painting and architecture in the tricky-to-paint chapel), show an understanding of perspective that heralded the beginning of the Renaissance.

It’s the emotion of the figures, though, that really set Giotto apart, making him one of the only artists of his day who knew how to paint saints to look and interact like real people. And, almost 800 years later, Giotto’s ability to invoke emotion still takes your breath away.

Piccolomini Library, Siena

The Duomo of Siena is one of our favorite churches in Italy. But hidden within the gorgeous, elaborate space is another gem: the Piccolomini Library.

Like the Sistine Chapel, the library’s frescoes are, more or less, a family’s celebration of… itself. After all, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to glorify the chapel built by his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. Similarly, in 1502, the famous painter Pinturicchio was commissioned by Francesco Todeschini to paint panels of the life of Pope Pius II.

After all, Pope Pius II was Todeschini’s uncle — and he’d raised Todeschini to the rank of cardinal in 1460. Todeschini himself became pope in 1503, taking the name Pius III… but he died just 26 days later. (The next pope? Julius II!).

The 10 episodes from Pius’ life are done with extraordinary realism, clarity, detail, and color, and thanks to a recent restoration, they’re particularly vibrant. As if those frescoes weren’t incredible enough, even the ceiling is covered in paintings with gold leaf accents.

Although it’s easy to get caught up in all the gorgeous painting, don’t miss the books that give the Piccolomini Library its official purpose. These precious, illuminated manuscripts belonged to Pope Pius II, who was known for his humanism and his learnedness.

Siena is a 1.5 hour train ride from Florence. A jewel of a medieval city, and once Florence’s main rival, it’s also the home of the famous Palio races.

Chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto

Before Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, there was Luca Signorelli’s masterpiece: the Chapel of San Brizio frescoes in the Duomo of Orvieto.

Signorelli started his work in the Duomo of Orvieto in 1499. Tuscan in origin, like Michelangelo, he’d already painted in the Sistine Chapel himself, being responsible for the Testament and Death of Moses on the side wall. What Signorelli did with the Chapel of San Brizio, though, made the fresco cycle one of the most influential works of art in Italy.

It was also one of the most influential works of art on Michelangelo, who studied Signorelli’s work before he started his own Last Judgment in 1535. And it’s safe to say that without Signorelli’s incredible compositions of muscled men hauling themselves out of the earth for the Resurrection, or gruesome tortures being administered to the damned, Michelangelo would have wound up with a much different Last Judgment than the one we see today.

One of the most striking things about Signorelli’s frescoes are just how, well, new they seem — and not only because they’re so bright and vibrant. All twisted postures, exaggerated muscles, and crazy color schemes (like the purple, green, and blue-colored demons in the scene of the damned), they look like something out of a comic book or even a video game. To 16th-century viewers, though, the scenes would have seemed much more real, showing them exactly what they could expect on the day of judgment… and how their sins today would have terrifying consequences tomorrow.

Whether you want to see where Michelangelo got his inspiration, or just lose yourself in these crazy, colorful scenes of the afterlife, don’t miss the Chapel of San Brizio. You can get to Orvieto from Rome on the train in 45 minutes, and, given its beauty and sites of interest, we think it’s one of the best day-trip options from Italy’s capital city.

Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi

Built in honor of St. Francis in the 1220s, the Basilica of San Francesco is one of the most beautiful, and important, churches in Italy. The basilica was, like the Sistine Chapel 260 years later, designed to be simple, architecturally-speaking — all the better for covering with frescoes. And that’s exactly what happened.

In the upper part of the two-level basilica, the walls are covered in vibrant frescoes from floor to soaring ceiling. Everywhere you look, you see color, light, and space — an extraordinary feeling.

Like all the best Renaissance frescoes, though, each of these have a story to tell. The 32 scenes running along the top of each side of the nave depict stories from the Old and New Testaments; it’s thought that the famed Roman master Pietro Cavallini may have been involved. Below, 28 different panels show scenes from St. Francis’ life (don’t miss him speaking with the birds!), often attributed, although controversially, to Giotto.

The frescoes in the apse and transept are by Cimabue, another of Italy’s most important early Renaissance painters. Perhaps the most striking is also the most mysterious: Cimabue’s Crucifixion panel has, over time, turned into a negative of itself, with the light colors becoming dark and dark becoming light, through chemical processes that remain unexplained.

The Lower Basilica is just as stunning, although completely different. It’s lined with a series of dimly-lit, ornately-decorated chapels. The ceiling above the high altar is covered in gold-laden frescoes, including allegories of Obedience, Poverty and Chastity by one of Giotto’s pupils. On the transept wall is Cimabue’s most famous masterpiece, Our Lady Enthroned and St. Francis, in 1280; Giotto and his workshop did the frescoes of Christ’s childhood in the right transept.

Then, of course, there’s the tomb of St. Francis himself, another level below in an eerie crypt, usually filled with pilgrims praying as they perambulate around his tomb.

Assisi, a gorgeous town and worth visiting in its own right (believe it or not, it boasts even more than the Basilica!), is a 2-hour train ride from either Rome or Florence.

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