Day 4 - Saturday, April 15
We rented a bus that drove us about 3 hours north to Florence. In Florence, we saw the Cathedral, ascended the Duomo, and spent time exploring the city.
Where We Went
-
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore & the Duomo
1. Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore
English: Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower
Santa Maria del Fiore is one of the largest churches in the world. The cathedral is 502 feet in length, 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 facade is a 19th-century neo-Gothic masterpiece, designed by De Fabris and adorned by the greatest Tuscan artists of the time.
​
Exterior of the cathedral
Another view of the exterior of the cathedral
Interior of the cathedral
"Giotto's Bell Tower"
Florence Duomo
The dome is an absolute masterpiece of art, enchanting the world since the moment of its creation: the symbol of Florence, of Renaissance culture, and of all Western humanism. The dome was built between 1420 and 1436 to a plan by Filippo Brunelleschi, and is still the largest masonry vault in the world. Such a structure had been planned since the 1300s, but the admirable innovation of Brunelleschi was to create it without reinforcements in wood since none could have sustained a cupola of this size.
​
It is an octagonal structure in stone and brick masonry, with external diameter of 179.79 feet and interior diameter of 149 feet, but in fact consisting of two domes: one internal and the other external.
​
"The Last Judgment" painted by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari on the internal vault in 1572-1579
Beautiful view of the city from the Duomo
View of the city of Florence from a nearby lookout point
