Famously referred to by Mark Twain as a “poem in marble”, Milan’s Duomo cathedral is not universally admired for its abundant mixture of architectural styles, frequently categorized as Gothic-Lombard. Still, whether you love or loathe the Duomo, it cannot be ignored and is well worth a visit.
The Duomo was commissioned in 1386 but not finished until the early 1800s, and is thus a strange mixture of architectural styles – Gothic, Renaissance and Neoclassical. The dimensions of the third largest cathedral in the world are awe-inspiring: it is 108m high and 158m long and is spread over an area of almost 12,000 square meters (or one and a half football fields), housing 3,400 statues and boasting 135 spires. The tallest spire, which has the famous “Madonnina” on top of it, is 108 meters high and is covered in 3,900 pieces of gold leaf. The building most startling feature is the extraordinary roof, with its spires, gargoyles and innumerable marble statues.The doorways are 17th century while the central balcony is from the late 18th and the three main upper windows are early 19th-century pieces by Carlo Amati. The last major items on the roof are from Napoleon's time, who loved it and was in fact responsible for its completion. The vast interior is overwhelming with pillars, vaults, stained glass windows and statues. Five great aisles stretch from the entrance to the altar and enormous stone pillars dominate the nave, which is big enough to accommodate 40,000 worshippers. In the apse three large and intricate stained-glass windows shed a soft half-light over the area behind the altar. Just inside the entrance is a staircase leading down to the remains of the baptistery and what is left of the earlier church.
Must-see: Find the staircase leading up to the roof for spectacular views of the Milan countryside all the way to the Alps (on a clear day).
The text below is courtesy of Ida Ehrbrecht
The Duomo
Like a mountain in the shape of a church, Milan’s Duomo rises in the center of the city, which has grown around it in a circle, against an often-hazy sky. Thirty-four hundred human stone figures climb the Cathedral from all walls. Some have reached the 135 spires, which resemble trees stripped by some prehistoric thunderbolt and transformed into marble trunks, and have been petrified, too, in this unusual position. Others have remained stiffened in various heights inside the Cathedral and on its façade, in niches or hanging from incredible hooks, as if they were waiting for their turn. What is the significance of this Cathedral, a record of a motionless past, a monument omnipresent in images and medals of the city, for the modern Milan of business and fashion?
The eternal immutability that seems to form the basis of every Christian building is not suitable for Milan Cathedral. No document reports who designed the ground plan and when this was done, nor which site foreman assumed the responsibility for the first chisel stroke. The General Regulations for the building of the Cathedral, issued by Visconti in 1387, confirmed Simone Da Orsenigo in the role of the General Engineer, who was then followed by German and French architects, in truth not very popular amongst the Northern Italian workers.
By the way, at that time, the initial concept of the Cathedral had already been changed. The planned dark-red city church had become the white, unique national monument that was to support the ruling Duke’s claims to power over important centers of Central and Southern Italy. The white marble was delivered from the quarries of Candoglia, which today are in East-
Piemonte but then belonged to Milan. Sculptors and smiths came from Southern France, from the Palatinate, from Swabia, the Rhineland and Silesia, from Prague, Austria and Hungary. Most of the artists, master builders and workers, however, came from the local people and the Milanese trades.
The schism of the Western Church into two spheres of influence with one pope each (one in Rome, the other in Avignon) for the first time threatened the unity of Christianity and strengthened already fierce protestant movements, which could have been able to seriously question the hitherto unlimited power of the Bishop of Rome. The Council of Constance, convoked by Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, tried to re-establish unity by nominating a third pope. On 16 October 1418, on his way back from Constance to Rome, the new and not quite undisputed pope Martin V consecrated the altar of Milan Cathedral, thus officially opening the Cathedral for worship. Only at the beginning of the 16th century, one and a half centuries after its first mentioning in a document, Milan Cathedral was completed, with the exception of its façade.
As late as in the second half of the century, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, leading protagonist of the Counter-Reformation and Archbishop of Milan, arranged for the adjustment of the choir to the new liturgical requirements of the Council of Trento. The Spanish take-over in 1559 as a result of the new European order dictated by the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis meant a decline for Northern Italy and almost the whole Italian-speaking area, with long-lasting consequences. The Spanish monarchy let itself be represented by weak and shortsighted governors. Unlike in music, sculpture and architecture, which in the 17th century bore masterly fruits, painting and literature suffered from an obtuse censorship of the Church. In Lombardy, this was lifted only in the 18th century by Her Majesty Empress Mary Therese (quoted from an ordinance of the Milan Cathedral Choir of 1767), i. e. under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs, who in the meantime had taken over the power.
In 1774, the 108.5 m high pinnacle of the Virgin Mary was built, in which both architectonically and ideally the construction of the Cathedral reached its highest point. In shape of the golden statue of the Virgin Mary, the angular Milanese dialect, molded into a tender melody, with its open or closed vocals generally used contrarily to the Tuscan model of pronunciation, honors the highest patroness of the metropolis.
In 1796, Napoleon’s troops marched into Italy. In Milan in July 1797, the Northern Italian area between the Alps, Piemonte, the Venetias and the Apennines was constituted as the Cispalpine Republic. In 1805, Napoleon had the façade of Milan Cathedral finished and thus brought it into a shape, which at last remained more or less unchanged. An international competition called in 1888 for the renewal of the façade failed because of the sudden death of the twenty-six-year-old winner, the architect Giuseppe Brentano.
In the end of the 19th century, which constituted a restless period for the young Italian Kingdom, the idea of making essential changes at the Cathedral was given up. Social tensions and violent upheavals did not spare Milan, overtaxed the short-lived governments in Rome, which had become capital only in 1871, and drove the whole Kingdom first into the First World War, and then into Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship.
Read 'SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE WITH LEONARDO DA VINCI'S LAST SUPPER'.
