Milan Cathedral: 600 Years of Marble and Obsession

Stop for a second. Look at this head-on. This was not built in years. It was built in centuries. Milan Cathedral is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world after those of Cologne and Seville. Construction began in 1386. Nearly five centuries of labor. It was commissioned by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the lord of Milan. He wanted to prove his city was as powerful as Rome. There was a problem. No one could agree on how to finish it. German, French, and Italian architects argued for decades over the design. Napoleon Bonaparte had to intervene in 1805 to finally get the façade completed. …

Tilt your head up. Count. Seriously. There are 135 spires on this building. One hundred and thirty-five. Each one has a statue on top. The tallest reaches 108 meters high. That is the Madonnina, the small golden Virgin who has protected Milan since 1774. There is an unwritten law in this city: no building may exceed her height. For more than a century, Milan honored that rule. In 1958 the first skyscraper was built to surpass it. The Milanese were furious. The solution was curious: a miniature replica of the Madonnina was placed on top of the new building. So, technically, she still …

These doors are not medieval. They look ancient, but they are from the 20th century. The most famous was designed by Lodovico Pogliaghi and took 37 years to complete, from 1894 to 1908. Each panel tells the story of the Virgin Mary. There are more than 400 figures on this door. Look closely: they are cast in bronze with almost photographic precision. But there is something few people notice. The five doors were not designed together. Each was commissioned from a different artist, in different eras. Some doors are from the 19th century, others from the 20th, and one from the 1970s. Ye…

Enter. Stand still. Let your eyes adjust. This central nave is 157 meters long, 59 wide, and 45 high. The Statue of Liberty could fit inside, with room to spare. There are 52 colossal pillars, one for each week of the year. Medieval architects planned it that way on purpose. Each pillar has a 3.5-meter diameter. Each one is carved with hundreds of figures. This cathedral can hold 40,000 people at once. At its partial inauguration in 1386, the nobility of all Europe attended. Leonardo da Vinci worked on this building. He proposed an elevator system to lift the marble blocks. He was tu…

Look at the light. It is not ordinary light. It is light filtered through 15th-century glass. The cathedral has 55 stained-glass windows. They are the largest of any Gothic cathedral in the world. The oldest window dates to 1400. Each one stands between 8 and 20 meters high. These windows tell the entire Bible in pictures. They were the "book of the poor": people who could not read learned here. In the Middle Ages, most people could not read. These images were their only source of sacred history. There was a serious problem during World War II. The Allies began bombing Milan in 1943. …

Go down the stairs. This crypt was not part of the original design. It was built specifically for one man: Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, born in 1538. Carlo Borromeo was the Archbishop of Milan who reorganized the city after the plague of 1576. Milan lost 17,000 people in three years. Borromeo personally walked through infected neighborhoods to comfort the sick. Almost all of his assistants died. He survived. In 1584 he died of exhaustion, aged 46. He was canonized only 26 years after his death, in 1610. He is one of the fastest-canonized saints in the history of the Church. His mummifie…

Look up at the transept. Do you see that red light flickering, high above? That is the lantern of the Holy Nail. There, 45 meters up, the Church preserves what it identifies as one of the nails of the Crucifixion. The nail reached Milan in the 4th century, brought according to tradition by Empress Helena, mother of Constantine. Once a year, on the third Saturday of September, the Archbishop ascends in a kind of flying chariot to retrieve the relic and show it to the people. This mechanism is called the Nivola, and it was designed by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. The Cathedral Treas…

You can go up by stairs or elevator. The stairs have 250 steps. It is not a hard climb. It is a revealing one. Each time you turn on the staircase, the view changes. First you see the cathedral interior from above. The pillars shrink. Then you begin to see the spires up close. They are enormous. Each spire stands between 3 and 10 meters high and is sculpted in detail. Detail that no one from below would ever see. The medieval sculptors knew this. They carved it anyway. There is a phrase attributed to Michelangelo, though probably apocryphal: "I am doing this for God. He can see it."…

Here you are. You are on the terraces. This place changed the history of modern architecture. In 1956, director Luchino Visconti chose these terraces for a scene in his film "Rocco and His Brothers". In 1982, Italian fashion agency Vogue held an iconic photo shoot here. Since then, the Duomo terraces have been synonymous with Milan. You are surrounded by Candoglia marble, the same used since 1386. The Candoglia quarry was donated in perpetuity by Gian Galeazzo Visconti for the cathedral. To this day, whenever the Duomo needs repairs, the marble comes from the same quarry. There are 5,…

Move toward the central spire. This statue stands 4.16 meters tall. It does not look so large from below. Up here it is enormous. The Madonnina was placed on December 30, 1774. It was the longest night of the year. Cold. The workers spent hours securing it. She is made of gilded copper. She weighs 200 kilograms. From that day on, Milanese have called her "la Madonnina", a loving diminutive. There is a popular Milanese song that goes: "Oh mia bela Madonina, che brillet de lontan." "Oh my beautiful Madonnina, who shines from afar." Every Milanese knows this song by heart. It is the cit…

Come back down. Now we go underground. Beneath the cathedral lies a buried city. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1943 and 1980 revealed three distinct buildings. The oldest dates from the 4th century. It was the first Christian baptistery in Milan. Here, in this very place, Saint Augustine of Hippo was baptized in the year 387. Think about that. One of the most influential philosophers in Western history received his baptism on this very floor. The one who baptized Augustine was Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Ambrose is considered one of the four original Fathers of th…

Go outside. Cross the street. Turn around. Look at the complete Duomo from here. This piazza was designed between 1860 and 1880, when Milan became the industrial capital of Italy. Before that, it was a maze of medieval streets. At the center of the piazza stands a statue of Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy. To the right, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II: the first covered shopping arcade in modern history, inaugurated in 1867. On the floor of the Galleria there is a mosaic of a bull. Stepping on it with your heel is said to bring good luck. The bull is worn down. M…