St Mark's English Church, Florence, Anglican church in Florence, Italy.
St Mark's English Church occupies two unified buildings at Via Maggio 16–18 in the Oltrarno, with a 19th-century facade echoing Renaissance motifs. Inside, the ground floor was converted into a church with nave, aisles, transept and chancel, about 90 feet long and seating 400. The upper walls carry floral motifs in the Pre-Raphaelite style.
Reverend Charles Tooth founded the church in 1877 as a house chapel and purchased the palazzo building in 1880 to create a formal worship space. This transformation marked the shift from a private to a public place of worship.
St Mark's hosts Opera at St Mark's, a resident company performing opera for more than ten years, alongside classical and sacred concerts. The cultural association runs a book club and an armchair drama club, and Florence Writers holds talks and workshops on writing, literature and poetry.
The church occupies two unified buildings at Via Maggio 16-18 in the Oltrarno, entered through a 19th-century front with two portals and a central niche. The ground-floor church is about 27 metres long and seats 400. The 1906 purchase of number 16 and the following works created the new vestibule and facade.
The marble for the statue of Saint Mark in the niche over the main door came from the same quarry as the block used for Michelangelo's David. Sculptor Jason Arkles completed it in 2007–2008; it was the first work by an American sculptor to gain a permanent public location in Florence.
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