Florence's central railway station, built between 1932 and 1935 to a design by Giovanni Michelucci and a group of Tuscan architects known as the Gruppo Toscano, is one of the finest examples of Italian Rationalist architecture. The low horizontal building in dark pietra forte deliberately refuses to compete with the Santa Maria Novella church it faces, while making a confident modernist statement of its own. The interior, now heavily commercialised, still shows the original quality of materials and spatial organisation.
What makes the station architecturally interesting is partly contextual: it was built right next to one of Florence's great Gothic churches, a location that many considered outrageous at the time. The solution — keeping the station low and long, with a glass-and-steel canopy covering the platforms rather than a grand central hall — was both pragmatic and elegant. The station is worth a few minutes of attention on arrival, especially the main entrance canopy and the original ticket hall interior, before heading into the city.