Travel Italy Exploring Florence About Inside The Duomo in Piazza del Duomo
Travel Italy Exploring Florence About Inside The Duomo in Piazza del Duomo
The duomo's interior (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1.30-5pm; closes at 3.30pm on first Sat of month & every Thurs; free) is a vast enclosure of bare masonry in stark contrast to the fussy exterior. Today the fourth-largest church in Europe, it once held a congregation of ten thousand to hear Savonarola preach - the ambience is more that of a public assembly hall than of a devotional building. Initially, the most conspicuous pieces of decoration are two memorials to condottieri (mercenary commanders) in the north aisle - Uccello's monument to Sir John Hawkwood , painted in 1436, and Castagno's monument to Niccolò da Tolentino , created twenty years later. Just beyond, Domenico do Michelino's Dante Explaining the Divine Comedy makes the dome only marginally less prominent than the mountain of Purgatory. The enamelled terracotta reliefs over the doorways to the two sacristies , on each side of the altar, are by Luca della Robbia, who also cast the bronze doors of the north sacristy. These sheltered Lorenzo de' Medici after his brother Giuliano had been mortally stabbed on the altar steps by the Pazzi conspirators. Judged by mere size, the major work of art in the duomo is the fresco of The Last Judgement inside the dome, though a substantial number of Florentines are of the opinion that Vasari and Zuccari's effort does nothing but deface Brunelleschi's masterpiece and want it stripped away. Below the fresco are seven stained-glass roundels designed by Uccello, Ghiberti, Castagno and Donatello; they are best inspected from the gallery immediately below them, which forms part of the route up inside the dome (Mon-Fri 8.30am-6.20pm, Sat 8.30am-5pm; closes at 3.20pm on first Sat of month; €5.16). The gallery is the queasiest part of the climb, most of which winds between the brick walls of the outer and inner shells of the dome, up to the very summit with its stunning views over the city.
In the 1960s remnants of the duomo's predecessor, the Cripta di Santa Reparata , were uncovered beneath the west end of the nave (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; €2.58). A detailed model helps make sense of the jigsaw of Roman, early Christian and Romanesque remains, areas of mosaic and patches of fourteenth-century frescoes. Also down here is the tomb of Brunelleschi , one of the few Florentines ever honoured with burial inside the duomo.
