A entrada do Paraiso

"The image of Florence that leaps first to mind for modern tourists is probably Brunelleschi's immense dome on the city's cathedral, the Duomo. But the dearest image of the town for Florentines over the centuries has been the smaller octagonal building that stands before the Duomo and serves as its baptistery. This, the most honored and sacred place in the city, is the church of Saint John the Baptist. Dante, who called it mio bel San Giovanni, "my lovely Saint John's" (Inferno 19.17), was baptized there in 1265.
Where the present cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, stands, there was, before the fourteenth century, the much smaller parish church of Saint Reparata. That could not compete with the shrine of the Baptist, who is the patron saint of Florence—what Saint Mark is to Venice or Saint Peter to Rome. Florence is "the city of the Baptist" (Inferno 13.143)—so much his city that the local coin, the florin, bore his image. This shrine of Saint John is where his relics were guarded —his jaw and two of his fingers, including the index finger that pointed to Jesus as "the Lamb of God." The most powerful guild in Florence, the Calimala, or cloth merchants, made the care and adornment of this place its special concern, lavishing on it princely sums century after century."

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Garry Wills, The Loveliest Doors (The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece) LER