... that I had no frapping idea of what I was looking at at the time, this shot proves it beyond doubt. Looking through my list of photos I am gobsmacked that this is all I took of one of the most significant buildings in Florence.
The Basilica di Santa Croce (Basilica of the Holy Cross) is a Franciscan church, reputed to be the largest Franciscan church in the world. So this is just another church, right? Albeit one whose construction started 725 years before this photo was taken?
Not exactly. The church is also known as the Tempio dell'Itale Glorie, or in English "The Temple of the Italian Glories". It is the burial place of people such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Rossini and many others who were famous in their fields as poets, philosophers, writers and so on but who are not as well-known today.
In the circumstances, it would have been well worthwhile to take some time to go into it and see those tombs. Certainly, it would have been worth the time to pull back and get a shot of the entire façade rather than this partial exercise. On this occasion it wasn't the focal length that was restricting me. I was actually at 40 mm here, which was the maximum reach of the lens. Why I didn't get another shot zoomed out, I really can't explain 4 years into the future. However I certainly think that this is worth taking another look at should I make it back to Firenze.