The Duomo

Florence's Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's dome

*** Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore - Florence's Duomo (cathedral)
Piazza del Duomo/Piazza San Giovanni
tel. +39-055-230-2885, www.operaduomo.firenze.it
Church:
Open Monday to Friday 10am–5pm (Wednesdays, closes at 3:30pm in May and Oct, 4:30pm Nov–Apr)
Open Saturday 10am–4:45pm
Open Sunday 1:30–4:45pm (tourists not allowed, though you can attend mass, in the mornings)

Brunelleschi's Dome:
Open Mon–Fri 8:30am–7pm
Open Sat 8:30am–5:40pm

Santa Reparata crypt excavations:
Same as cathedral, but closed Sun

» Free tours every 40 minutes daily

Viator.com tours
• Skip The Line: Best of Florence Walking Tour, incl. Accademia Gallery and Duomo
• Skip the Line: Florence Renaissance Walking Tour with Accademia Gallery
• Florence Half-Day or Full-Day Sightseeing Tour
• Florence City Hop-on Hop-off Tour
• Florence Photography Walking Tour: Birth of the Renaissance
• Private Tour: Florence Walking Tour
• Florence Walking Tour
• Private Tour: Florence Sightseeing Tour

Sights nearby
*** Baptistery [church]
*** Brunelleschi's dome [monument]
* Giotto's bell tower [monument]
** Museo dell'Opera [museum]
* San Lorenzo [church]
*** Leather market [market]

Where to eat nearby
*** I Fratellini [snack]
* Le Mossacce [meal]
Casa di Dante [meal]
* Alle Murate [meal]
* L'Antico Trippaio [snack]
Vecchia Firenze [meal]
* La Mescita [light meal]
*** La Giostra [meal]

Hotels nearby
Hotel Aldini [moderate]
Hotel Duomo [moderate]
Granduomo [moderate]
Palazzo Gamba [moderate/premier]
Hotel Bigallo [cheap]
Residenza Della Signoria [cheap]
» More hotels near the Duomo

ReidsItaly.com Florence Map

» View ENLARGED MAP with all listings

TOURS FROM OUR TRUSTED PARTNERS that include Florence

Intrepid Travel
Intrepid Travel 2011 Italy trips
• Best of ItalyPartner (15 days)
• Italy ExperiencePartner (15 days)
• Classic ItalyPartner (21 days)
• Italy Family AdventurePartner (14 days)
• Highlights of ItalyPartner (8 days)
• Tuscan ExpressPartner (7 days)

Gap Adventures
G Adventures 2011 Italy trips
• Ultimate ItalyPartner (13 days)
• Italy Culture and History Explored (9 days)
• The Taste of TuscanyPartner (8 days)
• Venice to Rome AdventurePartner (8 days)
• Italy Family AdventurePartner (10 days)

iExplore
iExplore Italy trips 2011
• Italy Experience (9 days)
• Italy in Style (9 days)
• Magical Tuscany & Portofino Peninsula (10 days)
• Tuscan Delights (8 days)
• Splendors of Italy & Southern France (16 days)

The nave of Florence's Duomo
The nave of Florence's Duomo. Fun fact: The first few windows are eternally dark because the church was redesigned partway through construction and the interior and exterior architecture doesn't actually match up.Florence's cathedral is sort of inside out, prettily decorated on the outside but rather barren within. That's not to say it isn't worth visiting. Just that its interior is not as spectacular as you might expect from so famous a church.

What really makes the Duomo so famous are everything but the church itself: the famous dome by Brunelleschi, the adjacent bell tower and baptistery, the sculptures in the Duomo museum around back.

In all, the Duomo is probably best to enjoy from the little piazza out in front, where tourists flock, street musicians and artists ply their trades, students strum guitars, and Florentines weave their way through the crowds with the evening's shopping in hand.

The cathedral facade

La facciata del Duomo di FirenzeThe Duomo's modern facade by Emilio De Fabris, 1871–87. (Photo by Christopher Patterson) The festive facade of the Duomo is a particolored Neo-Gothic take on what the overwrought imaginations of 19th century decorators imagined the cathedral builders would have wanted.

Until 1871, the cathedral didn't have a proper facade, though every major architect and artist of the Renaissance submitted plans or models for it (none were ever executed, but some are preserved in the Duomo Museum).

Know how you can tell the facade is a 19th century mock-up? The color scheme is a celebration of the then-new Italian flag, done all in red, white, and green to honor the freshly-minted Kingdom of Italy (of which Florence was, briefly, the capital, from 1865–70).

The cathedral interior

Paolo Uccello's fresco of the "Monument" for Giovanni Acuto in Florence cathedral
Paolo Uccello's fresco of the "Monument" for Giovanni Acuto in the Florence cathedral.When you do go inside, there are some interesting early Renaissance frescoes.

On the left aisle is a greenish fresco of a man on horseback. It's the condottiere (mercenary leader) Giovanni Acuto (born John Hawkwood in England), hired by Florence to help them conquer much of Tuscany.

The famed condottiere was promised a bronze equestrian statue as a memorial, but Florentines are a famously frugal lot.

After Hawkwood died, the city figured they'd save a buck by hiring that master of perspective Paolo Uccello to paint this trompe-l'oeil "statue" instead—a fresco of a memorial that never was.

The frescoes inside the dome, on the other hand, are colorful—and packed with agreeably gruesome scenes of the Damned in Hell in the Last Judgment bit—but not terribly good, started by Giorgio Vasari and largely done by his eager student Federico Zuccari.

Though these days they like to limit tourists to the nave, roping off the transept for actual worshippers, if it's open do make your way to the back left corner behind the altar to admire the bronze doors (by Luca della Robbia) and wood inlay of the New Sacristy.

In the crypt you can see the remains of the earlier church of Santa Reparata on this site.

Brunelleschi's dome

La cupola di Brunelleschi sul Duomo di Firenze
Brunelleschi's Dome on the cathedral of FlorenceHands down, my favorite thing to do at the Duomo is to climb the 348-foot-high dome (la cupola del Duomo), both for the great panorama across the city you get from the top and to see, from the inside, Brunelleschi's architectural marvel.

You actually clamber up between the dome's two onion-like layers—and in the process get some great up-close views of those crazy Zuccari frescoes (skilled though the frescoes may not be, the scene of the Damned being tortured in Hell is certainly imaginative).

The dome actually presented something of an engineering conundrum for the cathedral authorities in the early 15th century.

A yawning space had been left open for a dome that—at 45m (150 feet) wide—would be far larger than any attempted since antiquity. Unfortunately, no architect of the time had any idea how to span the space.

No architect, that is, save Brunelleschi, who unlocked the secrets of Rome's Pantheon to create the largest free-standing dome since antiquity, a masterpiece of architecture, engineering, and lyrical grace.

» Read the full story on the Brunelleschi page.

Tips

Related pages


   ShareThis

Intrepid Travel

Search ReidsItaly.com

This material was last updated January 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

about | contact | faq

» THE REIDSITALY.COM DIFFERENCE «

Copyright © 2008–2011 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.