The historical and political upheavals that have accompanied Santa Croce right up until today have always left a precise mark as much in the artisitic-architectural works (such as the radical transformations imposed by Vasari around the middle of the sixteenth century; or the exuberant commitment during the nineteenth century to tranforming Santa Croce into a huge mausoleum of Italian history), as in the testimonies guarded in its archives which hand down to us a daily reconstruction, through the course of the centuries, of a great project befitting its own creators, its own resources, its own objectives and difficulties.