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!
Getting tickets to see Monumental Complex of the Piazza Duomo in Florence is like getting Disney World Theme Park tickets in Orlando. The ticket gets you into multiple venues, and you get to choose the number of venues you want to see. Except in Florence, what you will see is much more historically significant, and hopefully will not be overrun with children behaving badly (although I wasn’t there during high season, so who knows). I would argue that it’s a lot more beautiful, too. And the food in the area is definitely superior.
We had seen a lot of what we wanted to see in the Piazza Duomo, and I described those things in prior blog posts. I told you how to figure out the complex ticketing system, and then showed you around the Crypt/Ancient Basilica of Santa Reparata, and the interior of the Cathedral of Santa Maria dei Fiore here, the bell tower here, the exterior of the cathedral here, and the Baptistry here. But you might be surprised to hear that I felt that we saved the best part of the complex for last. I’m talking about the Duomo Museum.
Of course, the museum cannot boast the stunning architecture of the cathedral or the bell tower or the baptistry. It can’t evoke the awe of these gigantic, almost inconceivably majestic works, but it has something those venues don’t have. It has mainly original artwork. Yup. In that way, the Monumental Complex is much like Disney World. Nothing is quite as it seems.
All the sculptures you see on the exteriors of the buildings are replicas. Incredibly well done replicas, of course, but still replicas. It’s not as though the city is hiding this fact. It’s just that it’s easy to forget. The stunning bronze doors on the Baptistry are replicas, too. A lot of the wood carving and art in the cathedral’s interior is housed in the museum as well. The museum also holds a wonderful collection of paintings from the Medieval and early Renaissance period, as well as elaborate vestments, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, church plate, drawings, musical instruments and micromosaics.
You get a close up look at the works of such masters as Michelangelo, Donatello, and Ghiberti. And as you look at them, you become increasingly grateful that you’ve been gazing at replicas up to this point, because these originals show signs of wear. Of course they do. Until this museum was established in 1891, many of these items had been sitting out, exposed to the elements, for 600 years. It’s a wonder that any of them survived. And it’s a blessing that they are now in a safe, climate-controlled environment.
An interesting fact about the museum itself is that the building stands where many of these sculptures were originally carved. In addition, Michelangelo’s David was carved on this very spot, because it was originally intended to become one of the buttress figures on the cathedral, but turned out to be too heavy. (That sculpture isn’t in the museum. I’ll be blogging about that on another day, so stay tuned.)
The museum didn’t just have a stellar inventory. It also had well-designed displays. For example, it created a replica of the façade of the cathedral, and then placed the original sculptures where they would normally be standing.
They also showed a video that explained how the cathedral’s dome was constructed as it was a miracle of engineering, and there were several displays to help illustrate that. (I suspect this was the area that interested Dear Husband the most, although he’s every bit the museum nerd that I am.) And for added ambience, the display included the rather grizzly death mask of Brunelleschi, the man who finally managed to create the dome.
We also had the opportunity to get an up close look at the lozenges from the exterior of the bell tower. I described them in more detail in my blog post about the tower that I mentioned above. Here are a few still images, as well as a one minute video I made of all of them, with Dear Husband’s help, as there were simply too many to include here.
They also had a display of the various submissions that were received in 1864 when they called for architects to conceptualize a new façade for the cathedral. It was about time. You see, in 1587 the arrogant, extremely unpopular Medici unilaterally decided to tear off the existing façade because they felt it was too old-fashioned, and then they never got around to replacing it. (Sound familiar?) The people of Florence were forced to stare at blank brick for nearly 300 years.
The original bronze doors of the baptistry were breathtaking. I wish I had more time to examine each panel in detail, but the place would be closing soon. But I did see them at least, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
This altar also used to be in the baptistry. Much of it is pure silver. The metal parts alone weigh more than 550 pounds.
This image sort of startled me. Since I’m not Catholic, my thought was, “Why on earth would anyone paint a picture of Jesus being shot full of arrows? But of course, he wasn’t the only one crucified. It turns out that this is a painting of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, a Roman military officer who was executed by being shot with arrows. I imagine he wasn’t very popular amongst the troops, when he confessed to being one of the “enemies”.
Here are some other remarkable works that we saw.
But for me, by far the most impressive item in the entire museum, Michelangelo lover that I am, was his Pietà, entitled The Deposition. I’m going to use Wikipedia’s image here, because ours just don’t do it justice.
What I find so moving about this sculpture is that the face under the hood, the figure said to represent Nicodemus, is also said to be Michelangelo’s self-portrait. The fact that he could bring out such depth of emotion from cold stone is more evidence (as if we needed it) that he was capable of magnificence. The sadness and pain shown here could be that of Nicodemus upon seeing the dead Christ, but it could also be the sadness and pain of Michelangelo, a mostly-closeted gay man who suffered from depression on and off for most of his life, and knew he was close to his end.
Michelangelo originally made this sculpture for his own tomb. He began working on it when he was 72 years old, and continued to do so for the next 8 years. As per usual, he was his own worst critic, though, and he wound up destroying it in frustration brought on by flaws in the marble. That’s why Christ’s left leg is missing. He then gave it away as a gift (a gift!) to one of his servants, who then sold it. (Michelangelo can’t be blamed for Mary Magdalene’s comparatively emotionless expression. One of his students made a ham-handed attempt at a restoration in 1560.)
At the very same time that he was creating this sculpture, he also wrote the following sonnet. It most likely reflects his state of mind, and it, too, may have helped him sculpt the pain on the face of Nicodemus. His writing should be better known.
Poem 285
"On the Brink of Death"
The course of my life has brought me now
through a stormy sea, in a frail ship,
to the common port where, landing,
we account for every deed, wretched or holy.
So that finally I see
how wrong the fond illusion was
that made art my idol and my king,
leading me to want what harmed me.
My amorous fancies, once foolish and happy:
what sense have they, now that I approach two deaths
the first of which I know is sure, the second threatening.
Neither painting nor carving any longer calm
my soul turned to that insane love
who, to embrace us, opened his arms upon the cross.
- Michelangelo Buonarroti,
written between
1552 and 1554
This would be his next to last sculpture. He continued to sculpt until two years before his death at the age of 88. I could have gazed at Michelangelo’s face, and, indeed, explored this museum, for several more hours. In fact, I’m amazed we weren’t thrown out. (We got a few dirty looks as we were the last visitors out the door.)
What a glorious place. I suspect a lot of visitors skip it entirely, because for reasons I’ll never understand, many people think museums, by their very nature, will be boring. But I urge you to take the time if you ever have the good fortune to visit Florence. And I recommend that it be the last of the venues you visit in the Piazza Duomo, so that you can better appreciate what you will see. Believe me, it’s a rare pleasure to be in the presence of so many artistic works of genius.
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