The Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi for the Arte della Seta, the Silk Guild, which built and managed the foundling hospital. It was commissioned in 1419, and Brunelleschi directly supervised only the first phase, from 1419 to 1427. It opened formally in 1445.
The Early Renaissance building has a nine-bay loggia with round arches that revive classical forms. Each bay is cube-shaped because the column height equals the width between columns. Gray pietra serena stone contrasts with white walls, and Andrea della Robbia made blue glazed terracotta roundels, mostly 19th-century copies now.
A wheel replaced a basin for leaving infants in 1660, and the hospital closed in 1875. The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre has been there since 1988, alongside a small Renaissance art museum. The article dates the attic story to 1439, which a 1460s fresco showing no upper floor contradicts.
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