campoli-churchVia Campoli passes in front of the Parish Church of Santo Stefano, built on a site which the Romans called “Campus Pauli”. Many Roman coins and fragments of pottery have been found in the vicinity. The old church is mentioned as early as the year 903. During the High Middle Ages the neighboring land belonged to the Florentine Bishops, who were the church’s patrons and had the right to elect the parish priest, despite the constant objections of the canons. In the early 16th century the parish church was given to Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, later Pope Leo X. Candido del Buono, a physicist, student of Galileo and protégé of Leopoldo de’Medici, became the parish priest in 1662. The church has kept its Romanesque facade, decorated with small suspended arches and a “wolf’s tooth” triangular brick ornamentation. The 18th century restoration work added the portico with its Baroque decoration. In the right nave, above the first altar is a Madonna and Child with Saints Stephen, Bartholomew, Anthony Abbot and Francis, an important work painted between 1500 and 1512 by the Florentine Giuliano Bugiardini, a friend of Michelangelo. On a pillar hangs a 15th century panel by Apollonio and Marco del Buono depicting a Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist. The wooden pulpit is decorated with the coat-of-arms of the Strozzi, Ardinghelli and the Medici-Hapsburg. The sacristy contains a fragment of a marble slab belonging to the tomb of Benghi Buondelmonti who died in 1381, possibly once located inside the church. In the left chapel, dedicated to the confraternity Compagnia del Santissimo Sacramento, a precious ebony reliquary will soon be on display. Formerly in the Cappella dei Principi, it was donated to the church in the 18th century by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine.

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