Santa Maria dei Miracoli: Interior looking toward the apse

Inside the church lay worshippers occupied the lower zone of the rectangular nave; the resident Clarissan nuns worshipped from an enclosed balcony at the back of the nave opposite the unusually high, raised presbytery. Inspired by the Florentine example of Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy, the chancel is crowned by a centralized dome on pendentives, but the effect is completely different, recalling antique and Early Christian precedents in Ravenna more than contemporary Florentine examples.