The Cattedrale dell’Immagine

What it is now

The Italian Ministry of Culture describes the Cattedrale dell’Immagine as a hidden spot inside the Santo Stefano al Ponte complex, a deconsecrated Romanesque church near the Ponte Vecchio. Its interiors have been digitally mapped to create Italy’s first immersive art theatre. In 2015 the church was reborn under that name as the first permanent Italian centre for immersive art. As well as immersive exhibitions, it works as an auditorium for classical and contemporary concerts and for events of wide appeal.

The church

Wikipedia calls Santo Stefano al Ponte a Romanesque-style Roman Catholic church in the piazza of the same name, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. It was built in the 11th and 12th centuries with a multicoloured marble façade and three aisles, and its exterior was renovated in the 14th century. Of the original façade, only the marble work around the portal remains. The portal is the part of the old church you can still read from the street.

The 17th-century rebuilding

Between 1631 and 1655, says Wikipedia, the three aisles were converted into an open hall, a crypt was added and a choir was included. That single hall is what you sit in today. It explains the broad, tall room in photographs of the interior, with a timber ceiling and stone pilasters, and it is part of why the church works as a concert space: there are no aisles or columns across the middle of the floor to interrupt the sightline to the performers.

Boccaccio and the Divine Comedy

Wikipedia adds one piece of literary history: in 1373 the church was temporarily used for Giovanni Boccaccio’s lectures on the Divine Comedy. The church has therefore hosted public performance of a kind for centuries, a point worth knowing when you sit down to a concert there. You do not need the fact to enjoy the evening.

The immersive shows

The Ministry of Culture says the interiors have been digitally mapped, so projections can wrap the walls, and that the venue hosts immersive exhibitions dedicated to major figures in world art. A photograph from 2014 shows the nave lit by projections of Van Gogh’s paintings on tall freestanding panels. Those shows are separate from the tenors’ concert, whose booking page does not mention projections. If you have seen the hall in photographs lit that way, expect the concert to be a different evening.

Sound and comfort

Reviewers praise the resonant acoustics of the concert, and some say the hall gets warm near the front and suggest better ventilation. Both are typical of a stone church that is not designed as a modern concert hall. There is no specific dress code, according to the booking page, so a layer you can take off is the practical answer. Pictures and videos are allowed during the concert without flash, and the concert is listed as wheelchair accessible.

Getting there

The address is Piazza di Santo Stefano, 50122 Florence. The booking page puts the concert a few steps from Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi Gallery and the Ponte Vecchio. Wikipedia says the Ponte Vecchio spans the Arno at its narrowest point and was rebuilt in 1345, after a flood swept it away in 1333, and that it was the only bridge in Florence spared in the Second World War. Check the address in a map app before leaving.

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