Milan's Duomo

Milan's Duomo

 

Massive and gleaming white the Duomo of Milan overlooks the entire city. It is definitely one of the country’s most outstanding structures, built completely in marble with 135 spires and 3,400 statues. With the amount of marble used and its sheer gigantic size, you would think that it would be ostentatious, but it isn’t. This church, which is one of the largest in the world, will stun you with its elegance. It was commissioned by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1386,but took more than four hundred years to be completed. With the construction spanning for so many years what began as a Gothic cathedral is now a mixture of various styles.

The most striking feature about the Cathedral is the fact it was built entirely in marble despite the fact that there are no quarries in or near Milan. All the marble was quarried in the Candoglia mountains near Novara, shipped to Milan as blocks by boat on the Toce river. From there on to Lake Maggiore, followed by the river Ticino and the Naviglio Grande canal, to reach the Milan habour from where it was finally sent to another small harbour Piazza Santo Stefano by the city’s canals.

It is unclear who the first architect of the Cathedral was: Considering the fact that the construction spanned over four centuries, many architects have undoubtedly added their bit to it. Ancient texts prove that some of the architects were brought from Germany and France. Masons and sculptors were summoned from Como, Bourgogne, Provence, Savoy, Swabia, Slesia, Prague, Hungary, Austria, to name a few.