A day at the Duomo

After a day of truffle hunting it was time to step up to the fire hose and start gorging myself on culture. Don’t get me wrong, I truly appreciate culture and admire the ingenuity and genius that is typically incumbent with the generation of anything culturally significant. Having said that, while I do appreciate culture, I am not one who typically gets all ooey gooey over culture as many do. That is not to disparage those that do, to the contrary I would like to be a little more ooh and aah than I am, I’m just not wound that way :-). The other caveat is that over two days I was basically lectured for eight hours on various aspects of Florencian/Renaissance culture, conveying enough information for a semester over the ensuing two tours; the ass/feet can endure what the mind cannot LOL. An older executive kindly told me that one day long ago as I was preparing to go over with him three hundred pages of research that I had generated for a project he requested :-). I say all of that to say this. The following is going to be a lot of pictures with what information I can remember periodically thrown in, I will not do it justice so apologies up front to those who are into such stuff way more than I am, too much left brain I guess. 🙂

The following is from the site: https://duomo.firenze.it/en/discover/cathedral it does much better justice to describing the cathedral than I ever could. It’d a BIG church but unlike many of the cathedrals in England, no one is buried in this cathedral of which I am aware. Enjoy.

Santa Maria del Fiore is one of the largest churches in the world. The plan consists of a triple-nave basilica with the presbytery area nested within, dominated by the large octagon of the immense dome, around which are three radial apses (or “tribunes”), each consisting of five chapels. The cathedral is 153 meters (502 feet) in length, 90 meters (295 feet) wide at the transept, and 90 meters high from floor to base of the dome lantern. The title “Santa Maria del Fiore” (Our Lady of the flower) alludes to the name of the city, “Florentia”, or “city of flowers”, “destined to bloom”, and to its emblem, the Florentine lily.

The first stone of the new cathedral was laid on 8 September 1296, and the task of erecting it was entrusted to Arnolfo di Cambio. His project was similar in plan but smaller than the current building, which instead corresponds to the expansion developed by Francesco Talenti, beginning in the mid-14th century. The church was consecrated at completion of the dome, by Pope Eugenio IV, on 25 March 1436.

The external walls are covered in white, red and green marble with geometric figures and stylised flowers. The sides are adorned with four elegant mullioned windows, eight circular windows and four monumental portals richly adorned with sculptures.

As I recall from the tour the exterior of red white and green marble was updated in the late 1800’s, after the unification of Italy in 1861, to represent the colors of the Tre Colore the Flag of Italy.

One of the more interesting items in the Duomo, at least for me, was the One handed clock that runs counter clockwise.

At the point this clock was designed and constructed, time was only measured in hours as the primary mode of telling time was the sundial. This clock mimics a sundial with its counter clockwise movement and the numbers indicate the hours since sunrise. Ingenious!

The other major gee whiz moment in the cathedral is to see the interior of the Duomo, or Dome.

Got to be honest, it was a challenge not to tip over while taking this shot as one was truly looking straight up. For those who have no fear of heights (not me) one can take stairs to an observation platform that rings the exterior of the cupola of the Duomo. However, to get there, one must traverse two interior transits. You can see the concrete rails above just above and below the circular stained glass window in the lower center of the above frame. Our guide said she has tried it twice and this is where she has stopped each time because the view is 200′ straight down to the floor of the cathedral.

Another interesting fact about the Duomo is the octagonal design. This we were told represents the seven days in which the earth was created, according to Judeo/Christian dogma, with the eight segment representing the rebirth of man. I am the parrot here just repeating what I have been told 🙂

As many may know the Medici family was very prominent in Florence and, while not of Noble blood, were very wealthy due to trading along the Silk Road and, more importantly, banking and money lending. But, and this is my own personal observation, after seeing all that the Medici did and had done in Florence including the elevation of relatives to Pope in the Catholic Church (Leo X and Clement VII) and several Cardinals as well, one can’t help but think that some of the over the top buildings and art work were in some ways compensatory behavior for the fact that they were not of noble blood. For example Cosimo, Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici are painted into the Duomo fresco “The Last Judgment” as seen below.

So, we are just about getting to the point where the guide, who was extremely knowledgeable to the point of being a veritable firehose of knowledge began to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher (wah, wah, wah, wah,wah wah) meaning she was talking, I was hearing but everything wasn’t going on the tape. So, what I am going to do from here is provide several pictures of the interior of the Duomo. Next post the Baptistry, crypt and the Duomo museum. If I remember something notable I’ll include it in the caption. Enjoy

At this point I am only half way through this tour! LOL Like I said, drinking from a firehose. Till next time, Ciao