The Rough Guide to Italy (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Author:Rough Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Italy
Publisher: APA
Published: 2019-06-07T04:57:54+00:00

Museo dell’Opera del Duomo

Piazza del Duomo 9 • Daily 9am–7pm • €18 Il Grande Museo del Duomo ticket • ilgrandemuseodelduomo.it

In 1296 a body called the Opera del Duomo (“Work of the Duomo”) was created to oversee the maintenance of the Duomo. In the early fifteenth century it took occupation of a building at the east end of the cathedral, which now houses the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, a superb museum that reopened in late 2015, after a €50 million rebuild.

The show-stopper on the ground floor is a huge hall containing a reconstruction of Arnolfo di Cambio’s facade of the Duomo, adorned with many of the sculptures that occupied the facade’s niches before it was dismantled in 1587. Opposite are Ghiberti’s stupendous “Doors of Paradise” and the Baptistry’s original North Doors, also created by Ghiberti. At some point these will be joined by the originals of Pisano’s South Doors. Also on the ground floor you’ll find a room devoted to Michelangelo’s late Pietà, which was intended for his own tomb. In the adjacent room the greatest of Michelangelo’s precursors, Donatello, provides the focus with a haggard Mary Magdalene (1453–5).

More masterpieces by Donatello are upstairs, where the Galleria del Campanile is lined with 16 sculptures (5 by Donatello) and 54 bas-relief panels from the Campanile. Donatello’s magnificent cantoria, or choir loft, hangs on the wall of another spectacular room, opposite a cantoria by the young Luca della Robbia. In the Sala del Tesoro you’ll find an amazing silver altar-front that’s covered with scenes from the life of St John the Baptist; this mighty piece was completed in 1480, the culmination of a century of labour by, among others, Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio. Designs for the Duomo’s facade are displayed on the top floor, and the itinerary ends on a terrace offering a great view of Brunelleschi’s dome.

Piazza della Repubblica

The main route south from Piazza del Duomo is the arrow-straight Via dei Calzaiuoli, a catwalk for the Florentine passeggiata. Halfway down the street is the opening into Piazza della Repubblica. The square was created in order to give the city a public space befitting the first capital of the newly united kingdom of Italy, but it wasn’t until 1885 that the old market and the disease-ridden tenements of the Jewish ghetto were finally swept away, by which time Florence had been displaced by Rome. It’s a characterless place, notable solely for its size and upmarket cafés, and the freestanding column is the solitary trace of its history: once surrounded by stalls, it used to be topped by Donatello’s statue of Abundance, and a bell that was rung to signal the start and close of trading.

Orsanmichele

Via dei Calzaiuoli • Church daily 10am–4.50pm; museum Mon 10am–4.50pm, Sat 10am–12.30pm • Free • bargellomusei.beneculturali.it

Towards the southern end of Via dei Calzaiuolirises the block-like church of Orsanmichele. From the ninth century, the church of San Michele ad Hortum (“at the garden”) stood here, which was replaced in 1240 by a grain market and after a fire in 1304 by a merchants’ loggia.

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