Duomo di Milano, Milan

Duomo di Milano is Milan’s cathedral, dedicated to the Nativity of Saint Mary. It serves as the cathedral church of the city and the seat of Milan’s archbishop. Construction began in 1386, and the final details were completed in 1965, making this a project that lasted nearly six centuries.

The result is the largest church in the Italian Republic, while St. Peter’s Basilica, although larger, stands in Vatican City. Its architectural language is identified as Flamboyant and Italian Gothic.

Simone da Orsenigo was the architect who began directing the work. The project itself changed dramatically: it started with plans for a brick church in the Lombard Gothic manner, then shifted to a far more ambitious design using Candoglia marble and late Gothic forms influenced by northern Europe. That change reflects the ambitions surrounding the building.

Gian Galeazzo Visconti wanted Milan to possess a monumental church that matched the newest European architecture and expressed the power of his state. Look at the cathedral’s pale marble mass and dense carved surface as the visible outcome of that decision: a church begun in the fourteenth century, shaped by changing plans, and completed only in the twentieth.