San Giovanni Battista, Modernist church in Firenzuola, Italy.

San Giovanni Battista is a modernist church in Firenzuola featuring a slender bell tower and a large window recessed within its limestone facade. The building displays clean geometric lines typical of postwar architecture.

Built in 1959, this structure represented a break from traditional postwar reconstruction methods in the Mugello region. The choice of modernism over historical forms shifted how this community saw itself architecturally.

The church keeps the name of the Romanesque parish church destroyed by bombing in 1944, and its layout follows the old crossing of cardo and decumanus. The three concrete pillars inside serve as confessional niche, side chapel and ambo, and the presbytery holds a circular stone altar podium with a burnished iron handrail.

The church stands on the corner where the old cardo and decumano crossed, on Piazza Agnolo da Firenzuola, whose western side is closed by the fortress. The main entrance opens straight into the single nave; the baptistery beside it has its own door to the outside. The south side, a stone wall with paired square openings, has a single copper-framed door.

Architect Carlo Scarpa strategically positioned windows to channel natural light and create shifting brightness patterns inside. This subtle lighting technique shapes how the prayer space feels throughout the day.