Milan Cathedral

Milan Cathedral took almost six centuries to finish. Work began in 1386 under Archbishop Antonio da Saluzzo, at a moment when his cousin Gian Galeazzo Visconti had just taken power in the city; the last bronze portal was inaugurated only on 6 January 1965. The site was chosen for continuity: it sits on the heart of Roman Mediolanum, and the remains of a fourth-century baptistery can still be visited beneath the square. Visconti gave the building works, the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the right to use marble from the Candoglia quarry, and marble from there faces the brick structure to this day.

The design was argued over for generations. The first master builder planned a Lombard brick church, but Visconti wanted the latest northern Gothic, and French and German engineers were brought in to advise; at the end of the 1390s one of them, Jean Mignot, declared that the Lombard masons were building without science and that the whole thing risked collapse. It did not collapse. The result is the most northern-looking of the great Italian churches: five aisles divided by 40 pillars, a nave rising about 45 metres, and vast apse windows. The façade went through Renaissance, baroque and Gothic proposals before Napoleon, about to be crowned King of Italy here in 1805, ordered it finished; it was completed within a few years. The highest spire, raised in 1762 to 108.5 metres, carries the gilded Madonnina, and the Milanese count a day as fair when she can be seen from afar.

Inside, look for the sixteenth-century statue of Saint Bartholomew by Marco d'Agrate, showing the flayed apostle wearing his own skin like a stole; the Trivulzio candelabrum in the transept, with a twelfth-century bronze base; and the tomb of Gian Giacomo Medici by Leone Leoni. A red light high in the apse marks where a nail said to be from the Crucifixion is kept, brought down once a year for the Rite of the Nivola. The most memorable experience, though, is the roof: visitors can walk among the pinnacles, flying buttresses and statues that are invisible from the ground. Mark Twain, who climbed up in 1867, devoted a chapter of The Innocents Abroad to the building. Milan's grand nineteenth-century arcade, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and the Teatro alla Scala are both a short walk from the square.

Getting there

The cathedral stands in Piazza del Duomo in the centre of Milan. Milano Linate Airport (LIN) is 7.1 km away; Milan Malpensa (MXP) is about 41 km. Duomo station, an interchange between metro lines M1 and M3, opens directly onto the square.