Inside Brunelleschi's dome

Florence's Duomo (Cathedral) and Brunelleschi's dome

Florence's cathedral is sort of inside out, prettily decorated on the outside but rather barren within. It's 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.

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 mercenary leader Giovanni Acuto (born John Hawkwood in England), hired by Florence to help them conquer much of Tuscany. He was promised a bronze equestrian statue as a memorial, but after he died the city figured they'd save a buck by hiring that master of perspective Paolo Uccello to paint this tromp l'oeil "statue" instead.

The Duomo Group
Cathedral
Baptistery
Brunelleschi's dome
Giotto's bell tower
Museo dell'Opera

The frescoes inside the dome, on the other hand, are colorful, but not terribly good. Make your way to the back left corner 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 an earlier church on this site.

One of my favorite things to do at the Duomo is to climb the 348-foot-high dome, both for its great panorama across the city 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 dome frescoes (skilled though the frescoes may not be, the scene of the Damned being tortured in Hell is certainly imaginative).

All the experts of the day said Brunelleschi never be able to erect a dome that big—notwithout using scaffolding and supports that would be too costly to build. Brunelleschi proved them wrong, unlocking the secrets of Rome's Pantheon (ribs to distribute the weight, and using two shells that thinned as they approached each other and the top) and using interlocking bricks that enabled the thing to support itself as construction progressed.

Piazza del Duomo/Piazza San Giovanni
tel. +39-055-230-2885, www.operaduomo.firenze.it
On Sundays, dome and crypt excavations closed (and cathedral itself open to tourists only in the afternoon—unless you want to attend mass in the morning)
Free tours every 40 minutes daily