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Almost everyone recognises the Florentine
Skyline which is invariably dominated by Brunelleschi's curved
red-tiled dome however, it is not until you see the Cathedral
first hand that the scale of this architectural masterpiece
hits you. The magnitude of the cathedral is such that for
over 200 years it had no Dome as they couldn't devise a way
of making scaffolding high enough without it collapsing under
its' own weight...
So how did they solve the problem of the Church with no Dome
- well back in the early days of the renaissance Brunelleschi
won a public competition to design the enormous dome, which
was achieved by constructing the scaffolding from one side
of the cathedral to the other rather from the ground up. Brunelleschi
also used a revolutionary type of brickwork called herringbone
i.e. where the bricks were interlocked in a very similiar
fashion to the way children playing with Lego today. Of course
the herringbone brickwork, ingenious as it was, would not
alone have been enough to stop the dome collapsing inward.
Brunelleschi's real stroke of genius was in creating a kind
of circular skeleton over which the external octagonal structure
of the dome took shape. Although nowadays the Dome is severely
cracked and under restoration, it remains a remarkable achievement
of design.
Did you Know? - The great temple's full
name is Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore and it is the
world's fourth-largest cathedral. It was begun in 1296 by
Arnolfo di Cambio and took almost 150 years to complete. It
is 153m long and 38m wide, except the transept, which extends
90m. The cathedral it replaced, dedicated to Santa Reparata,
fitted into an area extending less than halfway down from
the entrance to the transept.
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