Florence Cathedral

About

The cathedral rises at the centre of Florence's Piazza del Duomo, its silhouette dominated by Filippo Brunelleschi's vast brick dome. Together with the adjoining Baptistery and Giotto's free-standing Campanile, it forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage area of the historic city.

Its walls are clad in polychrome marble panels of green from Prato, pink from the Maremma, and white from Carrara, with a Gothic Revival western front completed in 1887 by Emilio De Fabris that consciously echoes the older Tuscan banding. The plan is a Latin cross, with three trilobate apses that form a flower in homage to the city's name.

Within, the basilica is among the largest churches in Christendom, its dome remaining the greatest masonry vault ever raised. The interior holds frescoes and tombs that link generations of Florentines to their patron saints and to the city's long Catholic life.

The Duomo is the seat of the Archbishop of Florence and the gathering church of the archdiocese. Daily Masses, feast-day celebrations, and pilgrim devotion to Saint Zenobius continue beneath Brunelleschi's vault, alongside the visitors who come to encounter one of the great achievements of Christian architecture.

History

The cathedral was begun in 1296 to a design by Arnolfo di Cambio, replacing the older church of Santa Reparata which had stood there since the early fifth century. Successive architects, including Giotto, Andrea Pisano, Francesco Talenti, and others, carried the work forward through the fourteenth century, slowed but not stopped by the Black Death.

By 1380 the nave was complete, yet the great octagonal opening over the crossing waited unroofed for decades. In 1418 the Arte della Lana, the wool guild that had taken on patronage of the project, opened a competition for the dome. Brunelleschi prevailed over Lorenzo Ghiberti, and from 1420 to 1436 he raised the dome without traditional centring, an unprecedented engineering feat.

Pope Eugene IV consecrated the completed cathedral on 25 March 1436, the first day of the Florentine year, with Guillaume Dufay's motet Nuper rosarum flores sung for the occasion.

Significance

Santa Maria del Fiore is the spiritual heart of the Archdiocese of Florence and a defining monument of the Italian Renaissance. Its dome reshaped Western architecture, while the relics of Saint Zenobius, an early bishop of the city, anchor its identity as a place of continuous Catholic worship.