Piazza del Duomo

“ Occupying one end of the Piazza del Duomo is the famous cathedral. It is built of brick cased in marble from the quarries which Gian Galeazzo Visconti gave in perpetuity to the cathedral chapter. It was begun in 1386. The name of the original architect is unknown, but it is certain that many German master-masons were called to Milan to assist the Italian builders. It was then the largest church in existence, and now, after St Peter’s at Rome and the cathedral of Seville, the Duomo of Milan is the largest church in Europe; it covers an area of 14,000 sq. yds. and can hold 40,000 people. ”

“ The sculptured pulpit, resting on lions, is supposed to be by Fra Guglielmo of Pisa, 1270. The centre of interest is in the Piazza Duomo, easily found from different parts of the town by means of the lofty Campanile, the “Torre del Podesta,” which rises above all the other buildings. By the side of it is the Duomo, a plain edifice, built in 1240. Over the central door is a Madonna, with angels, by A. della Robbia, and over the side-door frescoes by Balducci and Giovanni Christiani, 1369. To the right, on entering, is the monument to the jurist Cino (1336) . ”

“ It is true that with oft-repeated visits the vast building grows on one, but, however much its size may impress, it cannot be called a landmark in Italian architecture.
Close by these two structures and due west of the cathedral façade, in the middle of the Piazza del Duomo, stands the Baptistery. Its eight walls were covered with marble by Arnolfo di Cambio some time after the west door had been removed and the rectangular space for the altar constructed inside. The three doors that remain are, with the lintels, superb examples in bronze of the Renaissance period. ”

“ The candle, in an ancient copper porta fuoco surmounted by a dove, was then lighted, and the procession of priests started off for the cathedral with their precious flame, escorted by a civic guard and various standard bearers. Their route was the Piazza del Limbo, along the Borgo SS. Apostoli to the Via Por S. Maria and through the Vacchereccia to the Piazza della Signoria, the Via Condotta, the Via del Proconsolo, to the Duomo, through whose central doors they passed, depositing the sacred burden at the high altar. ”

“ On the ascent, at intervals, the eye is fascinated by prospects to the north and east over Val di Chiana, Cortona, Thrasymene, Chiusi; to south and west over Monte Cetona, Radicofani, Monte Amiata, the Val d' Ombrone, and the Sienese Contado. Grey walls overgrown with ivy, arcades of time-toned brick, and the forbidding bulk of houses hewn from solid travertine, frame these glimpses of aë;rial space. The piazza is the top of all things. Here are the Duomo; the Palazzo del Comune, closely resembling that of Florence, with the Marzocco on its front ”

“ The Duomo with all the blood upon its steps, the Piazza with all its passionate and burning history, seemed to them more real, more sympathetic, than the uneventful countenances, the harmless funereal urns, of this quiet race of men, who lived and died over one thousand years before our era. ”

“ Francis holds all in his spell now just as he held the people long ago, so that the saints who first preached Christianity to the Assisans, were martyred and brought honour to the city, are almost forgotten and their churches deserted. The citizens, though proud of their Duomo, with its beautiful brown façade, hardly appear to love it, and we have often thought that they too feel the sense of gloom and isolation in the small piazza, which makes it a place ill-fitted to linger in for long. ”

“ Its narrow busy streets, though they are wanting indeed in the arcading so characteristic of very many other towns we had passed through, have that peculiar charm which life and bustle always give to strange places; the crowds of foot-passengers threading the narrow ways, with no protection from the omnibuses and carts which jostle against them, are full of animation, and lively and picturesque in their costumes. Elbowing our way between them, we soon found ourselves in a piazza, with the Duomo rising before us in all the magnificence of its white marble walls. ”

“ From the centre of this glory stand out in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid tufa, vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of churches shooting up above a medley of deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid them all, the marble front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its unfamiliar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these heights there is a sudden fall; and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow there can support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.
The great Duomo was erected at the end of the Thirteenth Century to commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. ”

“ The impression which a traveller coming from the station first receives of the Duomo is of a vast ethereal presence at the end of the long street, so light, so cloud-like, so delicate that it seems to be no temple piled up slowly by men’s hands to the measure of their prayers, but a fabric of some upper sphere, built of air and dreams. Broad set in its main proportions, it gives high and ample seat to the swelling contour of the cupola, which a hundred pinnacles guard like serried spears, pointing into the upper blue around the spring of the midmost spire. ”

“ Slowly pressing his horse with the spur, and followed by his attendant, he again rode forward. They left the ground upon the right hand, which now forms the Piazza di Granduca, passed the high towers of the Duomo, or chief Cathedral; and entered the great thoroughfares of the Porta via de Repoli, and the Via della Scala, intending to cross the river at the Pont St Trinita. But the passage along the south or farther bank of the Arno (as the travellers stood) was now wholly impracticable. ”

“ It stands before her everlastingly, a memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn, visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. ”

“ It was an unspeakable relief, after such a street, to come, on a sudden, upon the Duomo, one of the few Gothic buildings in Genoa, and rest our jaded eyes on that architecture which Heaven seems truly to have put into the thoughts of man together with the Christian faith. O beloved beauty of aspiring arches, of slender and clustered columns, of flowering capitals and window-traceries, of many-carven breadths and heights, wherein all Nature breathes and blossoms again! ”

“ Most of the streets of Turin converge into the Piazza di Castello, in the centre of which stands the Palazzo Madama, a weird-looking, half-ruined building overgrown with ivy, with a gloomy look about its desolate towers. It is a fine and picturesque old place, especially on a moonlight night—a unique relic of the Middle Ages. Near it are the Royal Palace and the Duomo. The former is not unlike a barrack externally; but it contains a noble staircase and fine banqueting and reception rooms, the ceiling and floors being especially worthy of admiration. ”

“ And this fact, evil and good working together for life's sake, makes the Duomo a real power in the city, so that everyone is interested, often passionately interested, in it: it has a real influence on the lives of the citizens, so that nothing in the past or even to-day has ever been attempted 170with regard to it without winning the people's leave. Yet it is not the Duomo alone that thus lives in the hearts of the Florentines, but the whole Piazza. There they have established their trophies, and set up their gifts, and lavished their treasure. ”

“ The Duomo is more divine than St. Peter's, and worthy of genius pure and unbroken. St. Peter's is, like Rome, a mixture of sublimest heaven with corruptest earth. I adore the Duomo, though no place can now be to me like St. Peter's, where has been passed the splendidest part of my life. My feeling was always perfectly regal, on entering the piazza of St. Peter's. No spot on earth is worthier the sunlight;—on none does it fall so fondly. ”

“ The sheaves of banners were unfurled at the angles of the Baptistery, but there was no carpet yet on the steps of the Duomo, for the marble was being trodden by numerous feet that were not at all exceptional. It was the hour of the Advent sermons, and the very same reasons which had flushed the streets with holiday colour were reasons why the preaching in the Duomo could least of all be dispensed with.
But not all the feet in the Piazza were hastening towards the steps. People of high and low degree were moving to and fro with the brisk pace of men who had errands before them ”

“ The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe. It is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a necessity, or rather a possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and ruin, it conveys to us a more tangible impression of the former greatness of Pisa than books could give us.
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. ”

“ Here, in one grand square, within a stone's throw of each other, are the four wonders of Pisa; the great Duomo, or cathedral, the Baptistery, the Campo Santo, and the Leaning Tower—standing in a magnificent group by themselves in the open space, rendering all else near them shrunken, petty, and insignificant by their beauty and superb finish. These glorious structures seem like the newly-created wonders of [533] some magical workman, who has placed them here together in the quiet old city for the tourists of all nations to come and gaze upon, admire, wonder, and depart. ”

“ He now designed and speedily began the construction of the most exquisite building of modern times, the one in which the quality of classic art is most completely and beautifully harmonized with the spirit and fancy of modern times. The unsurpassed bell-tower of the Duomo, known and admired by all men as the Campanile of Giotto, is the most splendid memorial of the arts of Florence. ”

“ There was little to keep us in the Albergo, when, after a few minutes' walk we could be in the piazza, where the sun shone on [pg 129] Pisano's fountain, and on the Palazzo of the Baglioni and the Duomo opposite. But what a fall was there! A couple of gendarmes, priests walking two by two, a few beggars, were the only people we saw in this broad piazza, where at one time men and women, driven to frenzy by the words of Saint Bernardino, spoken from the pulpit by the Duomo door, almost fell into the fire they had kindled to burn their false hair and ornaments, their dice and cards ”

“ From the terrace where they now stood there is an abrupt descent towards the Piazza del Popolo; and looking down into its broad space they beheld the tall palatial edifices, the church domes, and the ornamented gateway, which grew and were consolidated out of the thought of Michael Angelo. They saw, too, the red granite obelisk, oldest of things, even in Rome, which rises in the centre of the piazza, with a fourfold mountain at its base. ”

“ The town is commanded by a castle which hath four bastions and a garrison of soldiers. Near it is a list to ride horses in, much frequented by the gallants in summer.
Not far from hence is the Church and Convent of the Dominicans, where in the chapel of St. Catherine of Sienna they show her head, the rest of her body being translated to Rome. The Duomo, or Cathedral, both without and within, is of large square stones of black and white marble polished, of inexpressible beauty, as is the front adorned with sculpture and rare statues. ”

“ As always in Italian towns, it must be visited early in the day if it is to be seen to advantage. In the morning it is crowded with fruit and vegetable dealers, sitting under bright-coloured umbrellas; in the afternoon it is triste and deserted, save by the cabmen, who pursue the stranger with their importunities. One side of this piazza is occupied by the Palazzo Publico—a large pile of building altogether Gothic in its inclosing walls, I fancy, but they have been so much altered from time to time that not much detail remains. ”

“ Every step we take we encounter some sign of this persistency or precocity of a Latin and classic spirit. Facing the Duomo is the baptistery, which at first served as a church, a sort of octagonal temple surmounted by a cupola, built, doubtless, after the model of the Pantheon of Rome, and which, according to the testimony of a contemporary bishop, already in the eighth century projected upward the pompous rotundities of its imperial forms. ”

“ It is not to speculate on the passable current of events, nor yet to dwell on the causes of that memorable failure, by which dissentient councils and false faith—the weakness of good men and the ambition of bad ones—brought rain when there might have been victory, still less is it to gaze upon the brilliant spectacle of the rejoicing city, that we are now wending our way along the Arno, scarcely stopping to notice the thousand stars that glitter on the Duomo, nor the flickering lines of light which trace out the gigantic tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. ”

“ In this lively, noisy Italian city, nearly all there is to see may be comprised in four things: the Duomo, the triumphal arch over the Simplon, La Scala and the Picture Gallery. The first alone is more interesting than many an entire city. ”