May's Florence speech venue represents European unity, not division

Santa Maria Novella is church with rich links to the Renaissance, a movement based on ideas that Brexit clearly rejects

The most charismatic of Santa Maria Novella’s artistic ghosts left no visible trace there. In 1503, Leonardo da Vinci was handed the keys to a set of rooms off its cloisters, where he lived for the next few years at the expense of the Florentine Republic; thinking, inventing and occasionally working on the Mona Lisa. He even seems to have built a flying machine there. The same rooms adjacent to the church were the venue for May’s Florentine address.

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