Leon Battista Albert, Façade of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 1448-1470, Photo by Georges Jansoone via Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License.
Façade (noun)
From the French word for “face,” a façade is the front of a building that faces the street where people enter.
Leon Battista Alberti’s early Renaissance design for the façade of Santa Maria Novella used many colors of marble to accentuate the rational system of circles and squares as well as the scrolls that serve to elegantly combine the two stories.
