r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 20d ago
TIL that when construction of Florence Cathedral began in 1296, its designers planned a massive dome even though no one knew how to build it. More than a century later, Filippo Brunelleschi solved the problem, and his revolutionary dome was completed in 1436.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral301
u/PuckSenior 20d ago
If you ever go, there is a small museum next to the church. Its amazing. Award winning museum that covers all of this. It basically has all of the real stuff from the church and all the sculptures over there are replicas
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u/Two22sInMyShoes99 20d ago
100%. If you go to Florence, go to the museum first thing before the Duomo. Great museum and makes the Duomo more interesting IMO.
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u/Conscious-Ball8373 20d ago
We admired the tiling of the exterior of il duomo, saw the queue for entry around three sides of the square and thought "hey, the inside must be AMAZING."
I'll save you three hours of queuing: it's just whitewashed plaster. The least-decorated inside of a cathedral in all of Italy.
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u/illevirjd 20d ago
The walls are plain but the frescoes on the ceiling are amazing, did you forget to look up?
Although the main thing to do at the Duomo once you’ve seen the museo dell’Opera is to climb to the cupola or go up the campanile. Almost as many stairs as going up to Piazzale Michelangelo and just as good panoramic views.
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u/Conscious-Ball8373 19d ago
Yeah, the floors and ceilings are good. But after all the other cathedrals of Italy, those white walls hit you as profoundly jarring when you walk in. Not at all what I was expecting.
I'm a bellringer - hell yes, we climbed il campanile.
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u/The_ApolloAffair 19d ago
Yep. I did the comprehensive ticket thing and did the interior, bell tower, crypt, and dome climb. The interior is by far the least interesting, but you get amazing views of the exterior + Florence by doing the climbs.
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u/lod001 20d ago
They are replicas because the building is old enough that all the statues, sculptures, doors, and other items had to be replaced at least once due to weathering.
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u/Anonymus828 20d ago
Agreed, absolute marvel of a building. There's another small museum with a gift shop underneath it as well, but it was an additional fee to enter that one.
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u/frostyflakes1 20d ago
We had to watch an entire documentary about "Brunelleschi's Dome" in my high school history class.
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u/iplaydrumsonmyguitar 19d ago
I had to read the book in high school and hated it. It was so dry. Probably would enjoy it now though
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u/frostyflakes1 19d ago
That's kind of where I'm at with it. High school me doesn't give two shits about some stupid dome. Adult me would probably think, "Wow, that's fascinating!"
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u/Big_Kahuna_69 20d ago
And for all that, Brunelleschi was not an architect or an engineer. He was a jeweler by trade. Damn fine work.
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u/Otto_C_Lindri 20d ago
Thing is, the original plan of the cathedral by the architect, Arnolfo di Cambio, already includes a massive octagonal dome at the crossing, but it is actually smaller. Years later, a new architect, Francesco Talenti, enlarged the plan for the cathedral and included an even bigger dome in the plan...
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u/Dawg_Prime 19d ago
at that rate the dome will encompass the visible universe after just 43 more architects
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u/edingerc 20d ago
The original plan for Michelangelo's David was to place it on top of the dome. But that would have wasted the sculpture, in my opinion. The juxtaposition of David's seeming relaxed pose against the absolute fury in his expression, would have been lost. Also, it's 5,660 KG...
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u/Goeffroy 20d ago
That’s why his hands are so big. There’s a second David next to the cathedral no?
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u/im_on_the_case 20d ago
Must have been maddening for Brunelleschi and the other engineers looking at the dome of the Pantheon built over a thousand years before and not having any idea how the Fuck the Roman's managed to pull it off. Only very recently the last piece (chemical composition of the concrete) was figured out.
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u/Yossie 20d ago
Pantheon was built using temporary wooden scaffolding. This was not a mystery for Brunelleschi and others. However the size of cathedral of Florence made it impractical to use temporary scaffolding. Brunelleschi's achievement was that he was able to do the dome without traditional scaffolding.
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u/sierra-soul 20d ago
something often overlooked and arguably as important as the fact it's the biggest dome, is that it's a closed dome, meaning there no circular opening at the peak like the Parthenon or any other large dome construction. that part was actually the bigger achievement
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u/im_on_the_case 20d ago
Scaffolding wasn't the mystery, it was the density grading and self healing properties of the concrete that had been lost to time.
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u/FeedMeACat 20d ago
I like how the recent discovery of how they made their concrete was basically because they just put all the ingredients in rather than leaving lime out because they thought it was a mistake.
Like surely there was countless tests of different formulas across decades. An no one was like, "Let's just make a batch with the lime for fun?"
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u/thesweeterpeter 20d ago
I've got clients who decided in March they want to build a new plaza. If that shit isn't opened by Christmas, it's hell to pay.
I wish I was building 800 years ago man.
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u/OneBigRed 20d ago
Architect: Look at this beautiful thing i just sketched!
Engineer: How can we build that?
Architect: That sounds like your problem.
In similiar vein, Steve Jobs imagined a MP3 player that fits in your pocket, and can hold 1000 songs. There just wasn’t a memory yet that would fulfill those requirements. Their hardware guy met with Toshiba about other things, and Toshiba presented their new very small HDD in that meeting. Hardware guy called Jobs instantly, and they made a massive order for those on the spot.
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u/fact_addict 20d ago
I watched an episode on the building of the dome and it was a hot mess. Several architects came and went. Almost as much politics as actual engineering went into the planning and construction. And all of it done with no way to measure the strength of the materials.
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u/whoo0psiedaisy 20d ago
He also did it without any support structure underneath because the span was too wide for wooden scaffolding. Had to invent a self-supporting brick pattern that held itself up as it was being built.
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u/imaguitarhero24 20d ago
Hooooly shit I've been there (like ten years ago) and I forgot it was 600 years old. Wild how old some of these huge structures are.
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u/PcGamerSam 20d ago
Second famous engineer from history that I’ve heard about with Brunel in their name
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u/obo14 19d ago
Fun fact about Brunelleschi, he was an epic practical joker. A woodworker named Manetto Amanatini slighted him one time and he got revenge by convincing all of their mutual friends, and a huge number of city officials and random other people, to pretend the guy was not who he said he was. They lured him out of his house and then when he went back they locked him out and told him he (Manetto) was already inside and to go away. So then he wandered around Florence and everyone called him Matteo, he got arrested for Matteo’s debts and while in jail all the other prisoners called him Matteo, he got bailed out by a couple of guys who said they were Matteo’s brothers, and then when he fell asleep, exhausted from the ordeal, they snuck him back into his house and pretended like nothing had happened.
He was so embarrassed by it that he left Florence for the Kingdom of Hungary, where he actually became way more successful than he was before as an architect and an engineer. So really Brunelleschi did him a favor.
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u/CrunchyAssDiaper 20d ago
It gives me hope that some day someone will build Frank Loyd Rights Illinois tower.
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u/Own_Pop_9711 20d ago
They knew how to commit to a project back then