Ospedale degli Innocenti

Fronting a quiet square near the Santissima Annunziata church, this building was founded in the early 15th century as a foundling hospital caring for abandoned children. Its elegant loggia, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, is often called one of the first fully Renaissance structures, its arches punctuated by glazed terracotta roundels of swaddled infants by Andrea della Robbia. A museum upstairs recounts the institution's long history and displays the tokens once left with children so they might later be identified.