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Great Discoveries "Personal Tour Guides" will provide you with the most enjoyable and informative way to visit the Duomo. Our carefully researched tour identifies and locates the most relevant treasures to ensure that you do not miss important works and that you clearly understand each item's artistic and historic significance. As you view these carefully selected treasures, our professional narrators, accompanied by historically appropriate background music, will delight, amuse and inform you, making your visit a most memorable experience. Learn about Florence's marvelous Cathedral, the construction of Brunelleschi's great dome and Giotto's magnificent Campanile (bell tower) with Informative descriptions, photo's, building diagram, sample audio tracks and more.
Santa Maria del Fiore has not always been Florence’s Cathedral. Both the Baptistery and the Church of San Lorenzo once fulfilled that role. According to medieval legend this resplendent building, with its elegant multi colored marble facing, was built over the remains of an ancient temple to the Roman god Mars. An earlier and much smaller church, Santa Reparata, probably built in the 7th century, once stood on this spot. Centuries later the Florentines added their dazzling Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore and Giotto’s famous freestanding Campanile, or bell tower.
By the 13th century, Florence Italy was one of the wealthiest cities of the civilized world and the richest in Italy, but for all its importance and prosperity it was one of the last medieval cities to plan a great cathedral. Other Italian cities had built or were building splendid new churches, not the least, Pisa and Siena, both major Florentine rivals. Grandiose statements in stone were a vital part in any medieval city’s sense of self worth, hence the comment of Florence's ruling Priorate or Council, that their church, Santa Reparata, “was too crudely built and too small for such a city.”
In response to the Councils decree, Arnolfo di Cambio submitted designs for a whole new structure that in its day would be the largest church in Christendom. His design for the new cathedral included a vaulted basilica, one of the simplest architectural forms, with an octagonal or multi sided apse, which is the area around the high altar, and a gargantuan octagonal dome, but he neglected to say how the largest dome raised since antiquity was to be built. Arnolfo did not finish his work. He died in 1302, after only completing the foundation and the capitals that would one day support the arches. He confidently laid the foundation for the enormous octagonal area, stretching 146 feet in diameter, which would one day support the dome. He died before he had worked out a way to cover it, leaving future architects the job of designing the biggest dome in the world.
Not only would Brunelleschi build the biggest, most beautiful dome of the time, but he would also do it without any need for expensive supports while work was in progress. He created a revolutionary new cantilevered system of bricks that would support itself as it ascended, surpassing the technique of the ancients with a system far more simple than that of the dome builders of the Pantheon or Hagia Sophia. To the Florentines, a people who could have invented the slogan “form follows function” for their own tastes in building, it must have come as a revelation; the most logical way of covering the space turned out to be a work of perfect beauty.
There is no doubt about it, the dome steals the show, putting one of Italy’s most beautiful bell towers in its shade, both figuratively and literally. The dome’s great size, 364 feet to the bronze ball, makes Giotto’s Campanile (Bell Tower) look small, though 275 feet is not exactly tiny. Climbing the dome is an experience that should not be missed, both for the views from the top and for the insights it offers into Brunelleschi’s engineering genius. There are usually lines that stretch from the entrance but they move fairly quickly. Also make sure you are ready for the 463 lung-busting steps. If you suffer from claustrophobia, note that the climb involves some very confined spaces.
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From
the beginning, the Florentines attempted to make up for their slow
start through sheer audacity. In 1294, the Council elected to build
a new cathedral and decreed: “It will be so magnificent in
size and beauty as to surpass anything built by the Greeks and Romans.
Considering that all the acts and works of a people who boast of
an illustrious origin should bear the character of grandeur and
wisdom, we order Arnolfo, director of the works of our commune,
to make the model, or a design of the building, which shall replace
the church of Santa Reparata. It shall display such magnificence
that no industry, nor human power, shall surpass it.” It must
be admitted that it would be difficult to express a more noble idea
and a more elevated sentiment than this.
Work
on the mammoth project faltered after Arnolfo’s death, but
it received a new impetus in 1332 when Giotto di Bondone was nominated
to succeed Arnolfo who completed just
two levels of his famous Campanile before he also died. Work continued
uninterrupted for another seventy years and Giotto’s Bell
Tower was completed. But the Cathedral’s great dome was not
built until 1418 when 
for your first sample before playing the second sample, or you
will not hear it.
