This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.
Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!
By popular demand, today’s post is about Giotto’s Bell Tower (or Campanile di Giotto, which I think sounds much more romantic). You caught several tantalizing glimpses of it in my last Italy post, as it is right next to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. And it’s quite clear that the two buildings are connected by both style and proximity. (And in fact they once had a flying bridge, which is why there are remnants of doors to nowhere on upper floors of both buildings.) It’s just that many churches of that era had freestanding bell towers.
If you get the right Piazza del Duomo ticket, as I describe in this post, and if you have better knees and backs than Dear Husband and I do, you can actually climb this tower and get some spectacular views of Florence, especially of the iconic dome next-door. Just be aware that it’s 414 steps up, and there is no elevator. There are a few landings where you can catch your breath, take in the view, and get a close up look at one of the bells, though. But bring water, and hit a restroom before you go.
We didn’t feel that disappointed by not having climbed the tower, though, because the exterior is absolutely gorgeous, and that, of course, can only be seen from the, er, exterior. What I find absolutely fascinating about this tower is that you can see that the architects definitely understood the concept of perspective at this point. As demonstrated by the straight on photo I snatched from Wikipedia, below, the top floor of the tower is much, much taller than the two floors below it, but if you look up from the ground as with our photo, they look equal in height. An homage to artistry and perspective. Nice little trick, that.
As mentioned in the post about the cathedral, its construction began in 1296, but the first architect, Di Cambio, died in 1302. When his successor, Giotto, was appointed to the cathedral in 1334, he chose to focus on the bell tower. He came up with a design, and they broke ground that same year. Unlike the cathedral, the tower was completed relatively quickly. It only took 25 years, which is not bad, considering the lack of power equipment, the intricate design, and the fact that it’s nearly 278 feet tall.
Giotto’s color scheme mirrored that of the cathedral, and the geometric patterns of the marble complimented it well. Sadly, Giotto passed away only 3 years after the first stone was laid, so he only got to see the completion of the lower floor, with its bas-reliefs in hexagonal panels.
Those panels are intended to depict the history of mankind, as inspired by Genesis. Creation of man and woman, then the beginnings of various trades such as animal husbandry, musical instruments, blacksmithing, farming, and then it gets more sophisticated: Astronomy, Construction, Medicine, Hunting, Wool Working, Legislation, Flight, Navigation, Social Justice, Agriculture, Art and Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Harmony, Grammar, Logic and Dialectic, Music and Poetry, Geometry and Arithmetic.
I tried to get pictures of all of them. See if you can identify which is which. I struggled. But they’re still pretty cool to look at.
The next person assigned to the project was Andrea Pisano. He built the strip of diamond shaped fascia (which are referred to as lozenges) above the hexagons. I was only able take pictures of one side, because I couldn’t back far enough away to get good pictures of the other ones. The buildings on the other 3 sides were too close.
These all have a dark blue glazed background which really makes them pop. They are allegorical representations. On one wall, you see the planets (which include, amusingly, the Sun and the Moon, but not Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which hadn’t been discovered and/or undiscovered yet) The next wall includes the Theological and Cardinal Virtues, then we have the Liberal Arts, then the Seven Sacraments.
Pisano also is responsible for the next two floors, which include niches for statuary. The uppermost niches were never carved out or filled in, most likely because that was 1348, the same year that the black death wiped out half of Florence’s population. Sculpture was probably not a top priority at that time. But the sculptures that were done are wonderful. They come from different artists and were sculpted anywhere from 1334 to 1435. They depict various Prophets and Patriarchs.
The most famous of these sculptures is by Donatello. It’s called called Zuccone, which translates as “pumpkin head” or “large head” or “bald head” depending on whom you ask. It is considered the most important marble sculpture of the 15th century. It was definitely Donatello’s favorite. He is said to have shouted, “Speak, damn you, speak!” as he was working on it. We happened to get a picture of it, purely by chance, before I even knew its significance. It depicts an unnamed prophet that some people say is Habbakuk from the Old Testament. You see it below. It’s the one in the middle.
I suppose that now would be a good time to confess to you that none of the hexagons, lozenges, or sculptures that you see on the bell tower today are the originals. You can see the originals in the Duomo Museum, just on the other side of the cathedral. The originals of all the work here, and on the cathedral’s façade, have been replaced by replicas in order to protect the originals from pollution. But even knowing that, you hardly care. Both buildings are still works of art. And frankly, I appreciated being able to see the originals in the museum, at eye level. Perhaps I’ll include a few pictures of the works in question when I write the post about the museum, so watch this space.
Pisano appears to have been replaced by Francesco Talenti in 1348. Even though Pisano died in 1348, and even though the black death was in 1348, I couldn’t get any conformation that any of those events were linked. It looks like Pisano took on other projects after he stopped working on the bell tower, and in another town, no less, so perhaps he got lucky.
Regardless, Talenti went on to build the top 3 floors. He veered off from Giotto’s original plans. If he had built Giotto’s spire, the tower would have been 400 feet tall, rather than almost 278 feet tall. Instead, he built a large, flat, projecting terrace up top.
The tower has 12 bells. The 5 oldest are no longer used. One of the largest ones can be seen if you climb the tower. The largest working bell is nearly 79 inches in diameter, and 11,872 pounds, which is more than 5 tons. It was built in 1705, and God only knows how they got it up there. I shudder to think.
As I did with the last Italy post, I’ll leave you with this video Dear Husband took of the bell tower and cathedral façade on a noisy, magical, Florentine night back in May, 2025. Enjoy!
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