Florence Cathedral
The Riddle of the Dome
Our experts' views
Who are our experts? Find out their backgrounds with our brief biographies.
MASSIMO RICCI
It's terrific! It's a terrific mystery that I've managed to unravel! I really believe it was my love for Brunelleschi, my love for my city, Florence, and for this monument.
NARRATOR
Florence, Italy.
Crowds of tourists besiege the doors of its cathedral.
Millions of people come from all over the world to stand beneath a Renaissance dome and marvel.
STELLA GAMBLING
It was very important for each city to show its strength its power its wealth. And they were very keen to have something which everybody else would look at with awe, and wonder how on earth it was ever constructed.
CECIL BALMOND
These are still dimensions that are big and serious for any engineering enterprise. I mean any engineer today would still have to seriously think, how would he go up fifty metres in the air ...that's a feat anyway.
NARRATOR
The dome of the Cathedral was built nearly 600 years ago. It was one of the first great works of the Renaissance. It's an engineering masterpiece - bigger than any dome built before, and completely new in its design. It's one of the most studied buildings on the planet, but still no one knows quite how it was built.
CAROLINE ELAM
An enormous building like this is quite difficult to analyse. You can't dissect it as though it were a corpse because a lot of its structure is actually buried inside. Nobody's going to demolish the dome in order to discover how it was constructed and so there are some things we'll probably never know.
NARRATOR
Its builder, Fillipo Brunelleschi was a shadowy figure, so secretive that no one has been able to discover the inventions that made his dome possible, until now. A local architect believes he's cracked one of the great secrets of the Renaissance.
MASSIMO RICCI
I truly love this monument. From being a child I have always loved it because, for a real Florentine, it is the symbol of our city! Coming to know the mystery in which it is shrouded, which resisted the investigations of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Ximelis, I have allowed myself to be seduced. I've now been studying it for twenty-seven years!
NARRATOR
Massimo has worked for decades on a solitary obsession. Now he thinks he's found the answer. And he's ready to prove it. In a Florence park, half a mile from the real thing, Massimo is building his own dome. It's an exact scale model of Brunelleschi's original - an experiment in Renaissance engineering. Massimo believes that this will finally reveal the inventions of the greatest architect of the Renaissance.
MASSIMO RICCI
Brunelleschi can be described in a few words - he is one of the greatest geniuses that humanity has ever had. He is one of the greatest geniuses of all time. He can't simply be defined as an architect, or an engineer, or even an artist because in all fields he has touched the principal apexes of art and technology. Defining Brunelleschi and the Renaissance seems very easy for me because the truth is that Brunelleschi is the Renaissance.
NARRATOR
When work on the dome began in 1420 Brunelleschi was virtually unknown. Sixteen years later the dome was built, and its architect was a superstar.
It's terrific! It's a terrific mystery that I've managed to unravel! I really believe it was my love for Brunelleschi, my love for my city, Florence, and for this monument.
NARRATOR
Florence, Italy.
Crowds of tourists besiege the doors of its cathedral.
Millions of people come from all over the world to stand beneath a Renaissance dome and marvel.
STELLA GAMBLING
It was very important for each city to show its strength its power its wealth. And they were very keen to have something which everybody else would look at with awe, and wonder how on earth it was ever constructed.
CECIL BALMOND
These are still dimensions that are big and serious for any engineering enterprise. I mean any engineer today would still have to seriously think, how would he go up fifty metres in the air ...that's a feat anyway.
NARRATOR
The dome of the Cathedral was built nearly 600 years ago. It was one of the first great works of the Renaissance. It's an engineering masterpiece - bigger than any dome built before, and completely new in its design. It's one of the most studied buildings on the planet, but still no one knows quite how it was built.
CAROLINE ELAM
An enormous building like this is quite difficult to analyse. You can't dissect it as though it were a corpse because a lot of its structure is actually buried inside. Nobody's going to demolish the dome in order to discover how it was constructed and so there are some things we'll probably never know.
NARRATOR
Its builder, Fillipo Brunelleschi was a shadowy figure, so secretive that no one has been able to discover the inventions that made his dome possible, until now. A local architect believes he's cracked one of the great secrets of the Renaissance.
MASSIMO RICCI I truly love this monument. From being a child I have always loved it because, for a real Florentine, it is the symbol of our city! Coming to know the mystery in which it is shrouded, which resisted the investigations of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Ximelis, I have allowed myself to be seduced. I've now been studying it for twenty-seven years!
NARRATOR
Massimo has worked for decades on a solitary obsession. Now he thinks he's found the answer. And he's ready to prove it. In a Florence park, half a mile from the real thing, Massimo is building his own dome. It's an exact scale model of Brunelleschi's original - an experiment in Renaissance engineering. Massimo believes that this will finally reveal the inventions of the greatest architect of the Renaissance.
MASSIMO RICCI
Brunelleschi can be described in a few words - he is one of the greatest geniuses that humanity has ever had. He is one of the greatest geniuses of all time. He can't simply be defined as an architect, or an engineer, or even an artist because in all fields he has touched the principal apexes of art and technology. Defining Brunelleschi and the Renaissance seems very easy for me because the truth is that Brunelleschi is the Renaissance.
NARRATOR
When work on the dome began in 1420 Brunelleschi was virtually unknown. Sixteen years later the dome was built, and its architect was a superstar.
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