Salvation Ain't Free

The Stairway to Heaven costs eight euro and has over four hundred stairs, but the view is totally worth it.

Wednesday, me and my roommate Kara decided to do one of the most touristy things you can possibly do in Florence: we climbed the duomo.

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(if you want more/better) pictures



The duomo is one of the first images that pops up when you google search 'Florence', and for good reason. The cathedral is MASSIVE I would know, because I have to walk past it multiple times a day when I have class. The cathedral was started in the 1200s, but wasn't completed until the 1400s when architect Brunelleschi was able to devise a way to construct the massive dome. From what I've gathered, this dome is pretty much an architect's wet dream. The duomo's dome (and yes, 'duomo' means 'dome' in Italian) is the largest dome ever built until the modern era, which basically means no one could recreate anything like it until the discovery of physics. Brunelleschi was an absolute genius.

And so, after waiting nearly two weeks for a clear day, Kara and I climbed to the top of this masterpiece and beheld our adoptive city.



See the crowning structure on top of the dome? That's where the viewing area was. Also, interestingly, Michelangelo's David was originally one of a projected twelve sculptures made to ring the outside of the structure at the top of the dome.



This, and the next two pictures are off the breathtaking fresco painted on the inside of the dome. When I saw this the second or third day here, my jaw literally dropped and I stared up at it awestruck for a good fifteen minutes. Seeing it up close was amazing, though my pictures don't really do it justice.

The bell tower.

This is San Lorenzo, the church near my school. Kara and I spent a while looking for the buildings we had been to from the top of the dome and searching for our apartment buildings.


One of the dome's giant white ribs (for lack of a better term, I suck at architecture sorry Alex!). It was so strange, at the top of the dome, we couldn't even see the rest of the building underneath us.



Though our shaking legs at the end merited an emergency gelato run, the steep price and stairs of the duomo climb was definitely worth it! Near the sun atop the church, for the first time ever, I understood why people feel closer to God in sacred places. I don't affliate myself with any particular religious doctrine, but I know if some divine power does exists, it has been here.