The Museum is incorporated in the vast complex of the basilica of San Lorenzo which, being the parish church of the Medici family, was particularly richly decorated. It is here that members of the family were buried from the mid-15th century onwards.
The Museum is especially famous for the New Sacristy which Michelangelo designed for the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, creating one of the masterpieces of architecture and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance.
The Chapel of the Princes was begun in the early 17th century to become the mausoleum of the Medici grand-dukes. This grandiose octagonal chapel, with its immense dome, is entirely faced with polychrome marble and pietre dure.