Day 2 dawned overcast but with a threat of blue breaking out for moments. But rain was in the forecast, and the temperatures were a comfortable but with the damp and threatening rain cool lower 60’s.
The Piazza del Duomo is the main square of Milan. Before us rises the massive, prickly façade of the Duomo. The huge equestrian statue in the center of the piazza is Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Italy. He’s looking at the grand Galleria named for him. The words above the triumphal arch entrance read “To Victor Emmanuel II, from the people of Milan.” This grand square is ground zero for public events, marches, and spectacles in Milan.
To the right of the Duomo are the twin fascist buildings of the Arengario Palace. Mussolini made grandiose speeches from the balcony on the left.
Directly to the right of the Duomo is the historic ducal palace, the Palazzo Reale, which now houses the Duomo Museum. The palace was redone in the Neoclassical style by Empress Maria Theresa in the late 1700s, when Milan was ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs.
All around us in the Piazza del Duomo is a classic European scene and a local gathering point. Professionals scurry, fashion-forward kids loiter, and your thieves peruse.
Duomo Cathedral
The Duomo is huge and angular, with prickly spires topped with Statues. The style, Flamboyant Gothic, means “flame-like,” and the church seems to flicker toward heaven with flames of stone. The façade is a pentagon, divided by six vertical buttresses, all dome in pink-white marble. The dozens of statues, pinnacles, and pointed-arch windows on the façade are just a fraction of the many adornments on this architecturally rich structure.
For more than 2,000 years, this spot has been the spiritual heart of Milan: In 2014, archaeologists probing for ancient Roman ruins beneath the Duomo discovered the remains of what might be a temple to the goddess Minerva. A church has stood on this site since the days of the ancient Romans and St. Ambrose (4th century), but construction of the building we see today began in 1386. Back then, the dukes of Milan wanted to impress their counterparts in Germany, France, and the Vatican with this massive cathedral. They chose the trendy Gothic style coming out of France, and stuck with it even after Renaissance-style domes came into vogue elsewhere in Italy. The cathedral was built not from ordinary stone, but from expensive marble, top to bottom. Pink Candoglia marble was rafted in from a quarry about 60 miles away, across Lake Maggiore and down a canal to a port at the cathedral – a journey that took about a week. Construction continued from 1386 to 1810, with final touches added as late as 1965.
The statues on the lower level of the façade – full of energy and movement – are early Baroque, from about 1600. Of the five bronze doors, the center one is biggest. Made in 1907 in the Liberty Style (Italian Art Nouveau), it features the Joy and Sorrow of the Virgin Mary. Sad scenes are on the left, joyful ones on the right, and on top is the coronation of Mary in heaven by Jesus, with all the saints and angels looking on. (High above that is what looks like the Statue of Liberty, dating from the 1820s – decades before Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi designed the one Americans know and love.
Topping the church (we could not see it from the Piazza – only while on the roof) is its tallest spire. It rises up from the center of the Duomo to display a large golden statue of the Madonna of the Nativity, to whom the church is dedicated.
Inside the Church
Initially designed to accommodate Milan’s then population of around 40,000, the cathedral’s sublimely spiritual architecture can transport 21st century types back to a medieval mindset. Once your eyes have adjusted to the surreal proportions inside (there are five grandiose naves supported by 52 columns), stare up to the enormous stained-glass windows, with 144 panes illuminating stories from the Bible.
Then look down and marvel at the polychrome marble floor that sweeps across 12,000 sq meters. The design was conceived by Pellegrino Tibaldi and took 400 years to complete. The pink and white blocks of Candoglia marble came from the cathedral’s own quarries at Mergozzo, and are inlaid with black marble from Varenna and red marble from Arzo.
Nave: it’s the fourth -longest nave in Christendom, stretching more than 500 feet from the entrance to the stained-glass rose window at the far end. The apse at the far end was started in 1385. The wall behind wasn’t finished until 1520. The style is Gothic, a rarity in Italy. Fifty-two tree-sized pillars rise to support a ribbed, pointed-arch ceiling, and the church is lit by glorious stained glass. At the far end, marking the altar, is a small tabernacle of a dome atop columns – a bit of an anomaly in a Gothic church. Notice the little red light on the cross high above the altar. This marks where a nail from the cross of Jesus is kept. This relic was brought to Milan by St. Helen (Emperor Constantine’s mother) in the fourth century, when Milan was the capital of the western Roman Empire. It is brought out on display for three days a year (mid-Sept).
Notice the two single-stone pillars flanking the main door – each is made from a single stone. Facing the altar, if one looks high and to the right – the rear corner of the church – you’ll find a tiny pinhole of white light. This is designed to shine a 10-inch sunbeam at noon onto the bronze line that runs across the floor, indicating where we are on the zodiac calendar.
On the floor by the main entrance you may notice a brass strip lined with signs of the zodiac. This is, in fact, an 18th-century sundial, installed by astronomers from the Accademia di Brera in 1783. A hole in the vault of the south aisle casts a ray of sunlight at various points along its length (depending on the season) at astronomical noon. All the city’s clocks were set by it up until the 19th century.
Right Aisle
The first recess along the right wall has the 1,000 year-old gray-stone coffin of Archbishop Aribert, a formidable figure in 11th century Milan. A couple of steps farther along, you’ll see a red coffin atop columns belonging to the noble Visconti family who commissioned this church.
The third bay has a plaque where you can trace the uninterrupted rule of 144 local archbishops back to AD 51. The stained glass-window above the plaque is interesting. You’ll find familiar scenes along the window’s bottom level: Cain killing Abel, the Flood, and the drunkenness of Noah. The brilliant and expensive colored glass (it’s not painted) is from the 15th century. Bought by wealthy families seeking the Church’s favor, the windows face south to get the most light. The window’s purpose was to teach the illiterate masses the way to salvation through stories from the Old Testament and the life of Jesus. Many of the windows are more modern – from the 16th to the 20th century – and are generally made of dimmer, cheaper painted glass. Many are replacements for ones destroyed by the concussion of WWII bombs that fell nearby.
The fifth window dates from 1470, “just” 85 years after the first stone of the cathedral was laid. The window shows the story of Jesus, from Annunciation to Crucifixion. In the bottom window, as the angel Gabriel tells Mary the news, the Holy Spirit (in the form of a dove) enters Mary’s window and world.
The seventh window is from the 1980s. Bright and bold, it celebrates two local cardinals (whose tombs and bodies are behind glass). The memorials to Cardinal Ferrari (below the window) and Cardinal Schuster (in the next bay), who heroically helped the Milanese out of their post-WWII blues, are a reminder that this great church is more than a tourist attraction – it’s a living part of Milan.
Main Altar –
The altar area is anchored by the domed tabernacle atop columns. This houses the receptacle that holds the Eucharist. Flanking the tabernacle are two silver statues of famous bishops. On the left is St. Ambrose, the influential fourth-century bishop who put Milan on the map and became the city’s patron saint. The other is St. Charles Borromeo, the bishop who transformed the Duomo in the 16th century. Charles had inherited a cathedral that was barely half-finished. He re-energized the project, and commissioned the tabernacle. Above are four 16th century pipe organs.
While the rest of the church is Gothic, the altar is Baroque – a dramatic stage-like setting in the style of the Vatican in the 1570s. Borromeo was a great champion of the Catholic church, and this powerful style was a statement to counter the Protestant Reformation that was threatening the Roman Catholic Church. See the dome above the altar – a round dome on an octangular base, that rises 215 feet? Napoleon crowned himself king of Italy under this dome in 1805. It was Napoleon who sped up construction, so that in 1810 – finally – the church was essentially completed.
St. Bartolomeo Statue – This is a grotesque 16th-century statue of St. Bartolomeo, an apostle and first-century martyr skinned alive by the Romans. Look at the incredible detail of this poor guy. He piously holds a Bible in one hand and wears his own skin like a robe. Carved by a student of Leonardo da Vinci, this is a study in human anatomy learned by dissection, forbidden by the Church at the time. Read the sculptor’s proud Latin inscription on the base: “I was not made by Praxiteles” the classical master of beautiful nudes – “but by Marco d’Agrate.
Windows:
The apse is lit by three huge windows, all 19th-century painted copies. The originals, destroyed in Napoleonic times, were made of precious stained glass. Each window has 12 panels and 12 rows, creating 144 separate scenes.
Archaeological Area: The church’s “basement” is a maze of ruined brick foundations of earlier churches that stood here long before the present one. Milan has been an important center of Christianity since its beginning. In Roman times, Mediolanum’s streets were 10 feet below today’s level. The stones and mosaics you see, the pavement you walk on, and the artifacts in the glass case date from the time of the Edict of Milan (AD 313) when Emperor Constantine, ruling from this city, made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire.
The highlight here is the scant remains of the eight-sided Paleo-Christain Baptistery of San Giovanni. It stands alongside the remains of a little church. Back then, since you couldn’t enter the church until you were baptized (which didn’t happen until age 18), churches had a little baptistery just outside for the unbaptized.
This humble baptistery was where St. Ambrose was baptized. Ambrose went on to become bishop here, and to mentor a randy and rebellious Roman named Augustine. On this spot in AD 387, Ambrose baptized the 31-year-old Augustine of Hippo, who later became one of Christianity’s (and the world’s) most influential thinkers, philosophers, and writers. And the rest is history.
Duomo Rooftop
During his stint as king of Italy, Napoleon offered to fund the Duomo’s completion in 1805, in time for his coronation. The architect piled on the neo-Gothic details, a homage to the original design that displayed a prescient use of fashion-logic – i.e. everything old is new again. The petrified pinnacles, cusps, buttresses, arches and more than 3000 statues are almost all products of the 19th century.
On the roof terrace, we’re within touching distance of the elaborate 135 spires and their forest of flying buttresses. In the center rises the 15th-century spire, on top of which is the golden Madonnina (erected in 1774). She was the highest point in the city until the Pirelli skyscraper outdid her in 1958.
Strolling between the frilly spires of the cathedral rooftop terraces is the most memorable part of a Duomo visit. There are stairs… but we took the elevator.
Once up there, we looped around the rooftop, wandering through a fancy forest of spires with great views of the city, the square, and – on clear days – the crisp and jagged Alps to the north. And, 330 feet above everything. La Madonnina overlooks it all. This 15-foot tall gilded Virgin Mary is a symbol of the city.
We first walk along the lower-side terrace. We got nice close-ups of fanciful gargoyles, statue-topped spires, and ever-changing views of the rows of flying buttresses (which, on this lavishly ornamented Gothic church, are both decorative and functional).
Notice and appreciate the detail. Keep in mind that the stairs we climbed were designed not for the public but for workers. The exquisite figures carved in stone around you – every face and every glower all different – were unseen by the public for over 400 years. They were all carved as a gift to God.
Next we climbed a richly carved staircase to the sloping rooftop – directly above the nave. As you wander among the spires, pick any one and appreciate its details. At the spires’ base is the marble “fence” that surrounds the entire rooftop, with its pointing arches topped with pinnacles, which themselves are mostly crowned with crosses. Each is supported by blocks of Candoglia marble, with its pink-white-green-blue hues (which blend into gray).
On the next level up, the spires have vertical ribs and saints in cages. Continuing up, they get more ornate, with flamboyant flames that flicker upward toward still more saints posing beneath church-like awnings. Finally, the spire tapers into a slender point, topped with a lifelike saint who gazes out over the city. The church has 135 spires – all similar, yet each different. No wonder it took 600 years to carve it all.
