Description
The Duomo di Milano is the city's great Gothic cathedral: a mountain of pinkish-white marble bristling with spires and statues, with the golden Madonnina on top. It is the largest church on Italian soil, since St. Peter's stands in the Vatican, and the very symbol of Milan.
Work began in 1386 and the facade was only finished in the 19th century. The result is a Gothic unlike any other, the product of five centuries of second thoughts, and a church to see three times: from outside, from inside and from above.
Inside, five aisles and fifty-two soaring pillars, with capitals full of statues of saints in niches. On the vaults, a painted imitation of Gothic tracery. The light comes through fifty-five monumental stained-glass windows, from the 15th to the 20th century, the work of Italian, Flemish and German masters.
The largest are the three apse windows. The central one keeps 15th- and 16th-century glass at the top and a gigantic radiant sun, the emblem of the Visconti who wanted the cathedral.
In the transept stands perhaps the most famous statue in the Duomo: the flayed St. Bartholomew by Marco d'Agrate, from 1562. The saint, martyred alive, wears his own skin draped over his shoulders like a stole.
Near the entrance, a brass strip runs across the floor: it is the meridian line laid out in 1786 by the astronomers of Brera. At solar noon a ray enters through a hole almost 24 meters up and lands on the line.
A narrow staircase leads under the square, four meters down, to the excavations of 4th-century Milan. Here is the baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti, where on Easter night in 387 St. Ambrose baptized St. Augustine.
Then there are the terraces, the marble roof you can walk on, unique in Gothic architecture. All around, a forest of pinnacles and flying buttresses that hide the rain spouts, and the city below.
Up there, next to the elevator, the Carelli spire is the oldest, from the early 15th century. On the south facade you will also spot statues from the 1930s depicting sports. Above it all, the Madonnina, gilded copper, more than four meters tall, hoisted into place in 1774.
At first it was meant to be a brick church, like many in Lombardy. It was Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti who wanted it in marble and Gothic, like the great cathedrals of Europe. He also wanted it as his family's mausoleum: the Milanese objected, and he fell back on the Certosa di Pavia.
French and German architects came and quickly left, quarreling with the Lombard master builders. The facade stayed unfinished for centuries: it was Napoleon who got it finished, and who had himself crowned King of Italy here in 1805.
In the Second World War the Madonnina was covered in rags so that its glint would not guide the bombers. The work, meanwhile, has never ended: "Longh come la fabbrica del Domm" (as long as the Duomo's building site), the Milanese say of anything that never ends.
Don't miss
• The terraces.
• The flayed St. Bartholomew.
• The apse windows.
• The meridian line.
• The baptistery excavations.
Did you know?
• Above the high altar, marked by a red light, is kept a nail that tradition says comes from Christ's cross.
• To fetch it, the archbishop rides a 17th-century elevator, the "nivola".
• Among the Duomo's organists was Johann Christian Bach, son of Johann Sebastian.
Work began in 1386 and the facade was only finished in the 19th century. The result is a Gothic unlike any other, the product of five centuries of second thoughts, and a church to see three times: from outside, from inside and from above.
Inside, five aisles and fifty-two soaring pillars, with capitals full of statues of saints in niches. On the vaults, a painted imitation of Gothic tracery. The light comes through fifty-five monumental stained-glass windows, from the 15th to the 20th century, the work of Italian, Flemish and German masters.
The largest are the three apse windows. The central one keeps 15th- and 16th-century glass at the top and a gigantic radiant sun, the emblem of the Visconti who wanted the cathedral.
In the transept stands perhaps the most famous statue in the Duomo: the flayed St. Bartholomew by Marco d'Agrate, from 1562. The saint, martyred alive, wears his own skin draped over his shoulders like a stole.
Near the entrance, a brass strip runs across the floor: it is the meridian line laid out in 1786 by the astronomers of Brera. At solar noon a ray enters through a hole almost 24 meters up and lands on the line.
A narrow staircase leads under the square, four meters down, to the excavations of 4th-century Milan. Here is the baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti, where on Easter night in 387 St. Ambrose baptized St. Augustine.
Then there are the terraces, the marble roof you can walk on, unique in Gothic architecture. All around, a forest of pinnacles and flying buttresses that hide the rain spouts, and the city below.
Up there, next to the elevator, the Carelli spire is the oldest, from the early 15th century. On the south facade you will also spot statues from the 1930s depicting sports. Above it all, the Madonnina, gilded copper, more than four meters tall, hoisted into place in 1774.
At first it was meant to be a brick church, like many in Lombardy. It was Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti who wanted it in marble and Gothic, like the great cathedrals of Europe. He also wanted it as his family's mausoleum: the Milanese objected, and he fell back on the Certosa di Pavia.
French and German architects came and quickly left, quarreling with the Lombard master builders. The facade stayed unfinished for centuries: it was Napoleon who got it finished, and who had himself crowned King of Italy here in 1805.
In the Second World War the Madonnina was covered in rags so that its glint would not guide the bombers. The work, meanwhile, has never ended: "Longh come la fabbrica del Domm" (as long as the Duomo's building site), the Milanese say of anything that never ends.
Don't miss
• The terraces.
• The flayed St. Bartholomew.
• The apse windows.
• The meridian line.
• The baptistery excavations.
Did you know?
• Above the high altar, marked by a red light, is kept a nail that tradition says comes from Christ's cross.
• To fetch it, the archbishop rides a 17th-century elevator, the "nivola".
• Among the Duomo's organists was Johann Christian Bach, son of Johann Sebastian.