He would have heard the monks singing the Mass and the Offices here in Latin Gregorian chant, as he famously recounts in his Commedia: "Florence, within her ancient walls embraced, Whence nones and terce still ring to all the town, Abode aforetime, peaceful, temperate, chaste.

"[1] In 1373, Boccaccio delivered his famous lectures on Dante's Divine Comedy in the subsidiary chapel of Santo Stefano, just next to the north entrance of the Badia's church.

The abbey was founded as a Benedictine institution in 978 by Willa, Countess of Tuscany [it], in commemoration of her late husband Hubert, and was one of the chief buildings of medieval Florence.

Major works of art in the church include the Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard (c. 1486) by Filippino Lippi (originally commissioned by Piero del Pugliese for his chapel at Chiesa di Santa Maria del Santo Sepolcro [it] or delle Campora) and the tombs of Willa's son Hugh, Margrave of Tuscany (died 1001) and the lawyer and diplomat Bernardo Giugni [d] (1396–1456), both by Mino da Fiesole (latter completed c. 1466).

The attached Chiostro degli Aranci (Cloister of the Oranges) contains a fresco cycle (c. 1435–1439) on the life of St Benedict, rooted in the context of the Badia's revitalizing by a prominent monastic reformer of Portuguese origin, Abbot Dom Gomes Eanes (OSB) ("Beato Gomezio" in the contemporary Italian sources) (c.

The cloister itself was built under the direction of Antonio di Domenico della Parte and Giovanni d'Antonio da Maiano,[6] with some assistance by Bernardo Rossellino.