The Ospedale degli Innocenti was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi beginning in 1419 — the same architect who was simultaneously designing the dome of the Cathedral. The building is considered the first purpose-built orphanage in Europe and a founding work of Renaissance architecture: its loggia of rounded arches supported by slender Corinthian columns established the proportional vocabulary that would define Florentine architecture for a century. The glazed terracotta roundels of swaddled infants by Andrea della Robbia (1487) in the spandrels between the arches remain in place.
The museum inside the former foundling hospital traces the building's history as a working institution from its foundation until 1875, with particular attention to the children who were left here — displayed in a moving installation combining the objects left with abandoned infants and the records the hospital maintained. The upper floor contains a small but strong collection of paintings, including Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi (1488). The original rotating stone drum (the ruota) through which babies were anonymously deposited is preserved in the entrance.