The Bahblog

One of my favorite sites in the word is Florence's Duomo.

It never ceases to take my breath away and I could sit and stare at it for hours. It acts as a landmark in Florence and we can always orient ourselves by looking for the dome. One of the Italy books I read is Brunelleschi's Dome so climbing the dome was high-up on the list of Florence activities. We climbed the dome on Tuesday and, though it was my second time climbing it, I probably appreciated it more than the first time given the knowledge I now have.

For some background, Brunelleschi worked as a watchmaker and goldsmith before entering a contest to build a dome for the long dome-less cathedral. His method involved building a dome within a dome, with the smaller inside dome being self-supporting and the outer dome essentially acting as a shell. He also ended up designing various hoists to haul materials up the dome. The men that actually did the manual labor for it were known as "uomini senza nome e famiglia" - men without name or family. Surprisingly few people died during the actual building of the dome. Many people had their doubts that it would work but it did and it's still standing today (though there are cracks, as the woman behind us who was terrified of heights told us as we climbed).

The actual climb felt relatively easy. There are 400+ steps, but it's a slow climb because you stop to look into the dome about halfway through and you're climbing with about 100 other people.

Only the last portion is up a very steep, winding staircase.

The view from the top is incredible. You can see all of Florence and into the Tuscan hills. We did a couple laps around the top and stopped for many pictures before making our way back down.

Going down was actually harder than going up as the narrow spiral staircase near the top caused us both to be quite dizzy.

We made it down to the bottom fairly quickly and continued our Duomo day with a trip to the Duomo Museum. The museum was recently redone and it is a must when in Florence. It contains the statues, including many by Donatello, that once covered the facade (the current statues are replicas).

It also has Ghiberti's bronze doors (alone worth the trip to the museum). The beautiful doors are bronze with a layer of gold on the top and each square tells a biblical story. The use of depth in the doors is amazing.

The second floor of the museum has Brunelleschi's model (very well preserved) and some of the tools that were used to build the dome. It amazes me that a guy without formal architectural training built a model for a dome, convinced enough people that it was going to work, and then actually made it work. It is truly a sight to marvel at.

We also saw the Baptistery. It has beautiful ceiling mosaics that workers from Venice put together in the late 1200s. One side has Christ depicted in The Last Judgement, giving the thumbs up to those on his right and the thumbs down to those on his left.

[Photos of Baptistry Jesus]

The rest of the mosaic tells the biblical history of the world in wonderful detail. The Baptistery was wonderfully empty so we spent quite a bit of time admiring the mosaics.

All of this admiring made us hungry, so we finished off our morning with sandwiches at All'Antico Vinaio. Without a doubt the best sandwich I've ever had and I'll let the pictures below try to do it justice.