ITALY  |  Florence Province, Italy Travel Guide
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
images
Bookmark and Share

Duomo

Cattedrale di San Zeno
Outside of Florence
Tuscany
Italy

Type: Religious Site
Hours: 7 am-noon, 2:30-6 pm

Comments ( 0 )
Rating (0 Votes)
No votes yet
With a striking façade of striped black and white marble, broken up by delicate tiers of arches and topped by two 18th-century statues of St Zeno and St James, it is the Duomo, at the bottom of the gently sloping square, that is the first of the square’s monuments to draw the eye. The slightly ponderous 70-m (230-foot) campanile to its side (essentially still a Lombard watchtower of plain sandstone) distracts from the effect somewhat, although attempts were made to include it in the party, as the top three levels of Romanesque-Gothic green and white marble show.Works by Andrea della Robbia brighten your approach – colorful terracotta tiles in the Gothic portico and a serene Mother with Child and Angels in the lunette above the door.

Inside, Andrea da Fiesole’s baptismal font (1498-99) is the first work to grab your attention before the silver altar dedicated to St Jacopo attracts you into the Cappella del Giudizio with its shimmer. Its delicate design conceals what was really a laborious work (weighing almost a ton and populated with 628 figures) that occupied Tuscany’s finest Gothic silversmiths between the late-13th and mid-15th centuries.

Last updated January 24, 2012
Posted in   Italy  |  Florence Province
 |  RSS

PhotoImpression

Explore the Destination
Amenities and Resources
Trending Themes:

Guides to Popular Ski Resorts

  • Ischgl is a small mountain village turned hip ski resort, with massive appeal among the party-hearty young crowds. It is... Read More

  • Andorra la Vella is its own little world, and not just because it’s a 290-square-mile independent principality (a fifth the... Read More

  • Bariloche (officially San Carlos de Bariloche) is the place to be seen. It is to Argentina what Aspen is to the... Read More

  • Aspen is America's most famous ski resort. And that's an understatement. For, as a ski complex, Aspen is unsurpassed. Its... Read More

  • Zermatt is a small but glamorous mountain resort town, with a population of approximately 5,700. It is one of Switzerland's... Read More

  • St. Moritz is a glitzy, alpine resort town in the celebrated Engadin Valley of Switzerland, with huge notoriety as the... Read More

  • Lake Tahoe is the premier lake resort of America, and the largest alpine lake in all of North America. It is an absolutely... Read More

  • St. Anton, Sankt Anton am Arlberg in German, is Austria's premier ski-bum resort! It's actually a small village cum... Read More

  • Kitzbühel, a small, Tyrolian resort town in the Kitzbüheler Alps, comes with international renown and huge snob appeal, and... Read More

 

Copyright © 2010-2013 Indian Chief Travel Guides. Images tagged as (cc) are licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.