Florence is the epicenter of all of this.
When we look at this dome, this is the
Duomo, the Cathedral of Florence. And we
gotta understand, that is really the
architectural kickoff for the
Renaissance. Within a 10-minute walk of
that dome, you can see much of the great
art of the Renaissance. That dome itself
symbolizes the spirit of the Renaissance.
when the Florentines built the Gothic
church, they didn't know how they were
gonna finish it.
They just knew it was
not going to be another
Gothic spire, it was going
to be something more
Renaissance, more
Roman, it was going to
be a dome but they
didn't know how to
make the dome yet. And
they scrambled, and
they found somebody,
Brunelleschi, who
could innovate this, and they capped that
Gothic church with a Renaissance dome.
This was the biggest dome built in Europe
since the year 200, when they built the
Pantheon. 1,200 years, they had not been
able to build a dome bigger than the
Pantheon, and now the Florentines did it.
To give you an idea of how respected
this dome was, later on when Michelangelo
was hired to go to Rome and design the
new St. Peter's Basilica,
he said, "I can build a
dome bigger but not more
beautiful than the dome in
my hometown," designed by Brunelleschi, the
Duomo in Florence. That's the dome that
inspired so many domes until today.
And today you
can go to the top of
that dome as a visitor.
