ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence as a site of learned memory. It traces its transformation from a Franciscan church into a mausoleum for scholars, focusing on monuments for figures such as Leonardo Bruni and Galileo Galilei. The chapter shows how funerary monuments and inscriptions celebrated intellectual virtues, emphasising how local memory practices were intertwined with broader European scholarly traditions. Santa Croce became a place where Florentine civic pride and European intellectual ideals converged, demonstrating the role of such spaces for scholarly identity formation.
