Pretty In Pink (and Green)

Here in the South, the arrival of spring has been declared with aplomb. You can already watch the grass grow, and it seems to need cutting every other day.  But even more apparent, the blooms are everywhere. Pink azaleas (a staple at last weekend’s Masters golf tournament) run rampant. The roses have never been redder. And the giant flower heads of white hydrangeas will soon spring forth. This Easter week therefore, it seems appropriate for this blog to pay a visit to another cathedral: Saint Mary of the Flowers in Florence, Italy.

Santa Maria dei Fiore

My LEGO creation of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is quickly coming to a close, so I need to tour you through at least one or two more cathedrals before I’m done.  The first, you may recall, was Saint John Lateran in Rome (read about that one in Tucked-Away Place to Pray).  Today we’re a three-hour drive to the north, at Santa Maria dei Fiore.  It’s no surprise my tour of the world’s prominent cathedrals continues in Italy.  To be honest, the whole tour would do just fine if it never left the country.

West facade and bell tower

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany, known for its stunning landscapes, world-class wines, and Renaissance art and architecture.  Approaching the city from any direction, you cannot help but notice Santa Maria dei Fiore.  The cathedral is not only one of the largest in the world, but its exterior is finished with marble panels of pink and green, giving the structure a light, airy contrast to the surrounding buildings.  The church is crowned by a distinctive dome, which captures your attention even before the church itself.

Inside shell of the dome

The architect in me wants to highlight Santa Maria dei Fiore for the remarkable engineering that went into this massive structure.  I could spend an entire post talking about the design of the dome alone.  Consider, its structure is actually one inside of another.  The brick-clad concrete shell you see from the outside is connected to the one you see from the inside by “chains” of stone, iron, and wood.  With this approach, Santa Maria dei Fiore doesn’t require the flying buttresses so prominent in Notre-Dame de Paris (a structural element the Italians regarded as “ugly makeshifts”).  And the dome’s four million bricks – which might seem heavy-handed (ha) – are a much lighter material than stone or tile.

There’s more to this cathedral than its dome, of course.  The plan, a traditional Latin cross, includes three rounded apses surrounding the altar, each used as a chapel.  The nave (sanctuary) is the length of two football fields; a vast interior space with single aisles on either side.  The structural arches soar 75 feet above the seemingly endless marble floor.  And perhaps most unusual, Santa Maria dei Fiore is actually a complex of three buildings.  You enter the adjacent octagonal Baptistry of St. John through sets of bronze doors (which are replacements for the famous originals now residing in a nearby museum).  And the slender free-standing Giotto’s Campanile (bell tower) is a decorated work of art in itself.  All three structures blend together with those distinctive pink and green marble tiles.

Baptistry of St. John

If you’re ever fortunate enough to visit Saint Mary of the Flowers, be sure to purchase the ticket to climb to the top of the dome.  Filippo Brunelleschi – the architect -included a narrow staircase between the two shells so you can reach the uppermost cupola for a spectacular view of Florence and the surrounding countryside. Brunelleschi designed other structures in his lifetime; churches, chapels, hospitals, and such, but the Florence Cathedral is his crowning achievement.  It’s no wonder you’ll find his tomb right inside the entrance, alongside the more prominent players in Santa Maria’s storied history.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #12

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

Oh my stars, the build was challenging today!  Bags 22, 23, and 24 – of 34 bags of pieces, focused almost exclusively on the west facade and the rising of the bell towers.  We added the final rose window (above the west entrance) and reinforced the upper reaches of the nave in anticipation of adding the roof.

Magic wands?

So here’s a detail I didn’t expect.  In Notre-Dame’s towers, just below the uppermost structure (where the bells live – still to be built), you have – how else can I say it? – “stars on flag poles”.  Forty stars on flag poles, to be precise.  When I dumped out Bag 24, I thought, “What the…?” as the pile of magic wands you see here appeared.  Did LEGO mistakenly add pieces from a Harry Potter model into mine?  A Disney perhaps?  Nope.  Look at the final photo.  Every one of those stars is planted at the west end of the cathedral like palm trees; most of them in the bell towers.  Nice detail, Notre-Dame.  As for installing them?  It’s tough enough to push little poles into LEGO holes one-by-one-by one, but then you have to rotate the stars precisely forty-five degrees from the plane of the cathedral walls.  The engineers at LEGO are having a barrel of laughs at my expense.

(Click for more detail)

By the way, we’ve made it to the year 1245 as we build the bell towers, almost a hundred years after laying the first cornerstone at the opposite end.  And we are almost done.  By the numbers we have ten bags of pieces to go, but by the look of the model we’re closer than that.  They must be small bags of pieces.  Whatever.  I just hope they don’t contain any more stars on flagpoles.

Running build time: 12 hrs. 01 min.

Total leftover pieces: 32

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

23 thoughts on “Pretty In Pink (and Green)”

  1. Tuscany is one of those places I’d love to visit, but it never seems to rise high enough on my very long list of places to see to go buy the tickets to go there. Someday.

    Considering it took centuries to build the real cathedral, your model is moving at lightning speed.

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    1. I might say the same about Tuscany if I didn’t spend a college year in Italy. My wife needs to learn a little bit about the country, if only to understand her husband a little better 🙂

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    1. You (of all people) probably already knew about the stars, Monica. They’re a new building element on me. Maybe some day I’ll go back to Firenze and take an in-depth tour of the Duomo. I’d love to know how big those stars on poles are in real life.

      Light up Notre-Dame de Paris? Great idea! 😉

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  3. It sounds like a botanical garden of delights awaits you every time you step outside the door, the likes of which we likely won’t see for another six to eight weeks. Patience is a virtue with the Notre Dame Cathedral build!

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    1. Many of the blooms are brief (as you know so well) so we’re enjoying them while we can. The azaleas and roses will be short-lived with our southern heat on the near horizon. But then smack dab in the middle of summer the camellias will pop up as if to say “our turn”. It’s a whole lot more colorful around here than anything we ever saw in Colorado.

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      1. I’m sure South Carolina is a lot more colorful than Colorado. A fellow blogger moved to North Carolina after being a lifelong resident of Connecticut and has posted pics of blooms at the botanical gardens almost six weeks ago already. They have been having some odd weather in North Carolina – one day soaring to near 90, the next day a frost advisory at night.

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  4. There is a company called Light My Bricks that makes lighting kits. For just $99.99 you can light up the Notre-Dame de Paris. Briksmax also makes a kit that costs less but looks nice too. There seems to be quite a few other companies that make light kits too!

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    1. Monica at Brilliant Viewpoint made me aware of Briksmax too. How could I not go for that enhancement, right? The extra step in the build will be worth it!

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  6. I cannot imagine how you can build cathedrals. This very day for the first time in a very long time, I tried to make simple repairs on some very small LEGO structures that grandchildren had “broken” in our displays. It was nerve-racking for me!

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    1. In fact, I also have a repair to make, on the cathedral. I tried to mount an element recently and realized I’d done something wrong several steps beforehand (like, weeks ago). Now I have to backtrack in the instruction manual to figure out how to correct it so it looks right. The casual observer wouldn’t even notice, but it’ll keep me up at night if I don’t address it!

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  7. I’ve been there. I left the expensive camera I’d gotten for Christmas in the bathroom of the cathedral. I was so bummed. And I didn’t do the tour to the top of the cupola! Bummer I missed that. I think I climbed to the top of the one at St. Peter’s though.

    My daughter is on a high school trip to France and sent pics of Notre Dame this morning. I kid you not! It looks great post-fire, thankfully.

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  8. I don’t recall climbing the St. Peter’s dome when I lived in Rome. , With both dome climbs, I think you get a dizzying view straight down into the sanctuary space. Bummer camera story. I made a similar mistake right down the road from you. I left a pair of very expensive sunglasses in the bathroom of the San Diego harbor ferry terminal. Went back a couple of hours later and – would you believe it? – they were still sitting there on top of the stall TP holder 🙂

    Jealous to hear about your daughter’s visit to Notre-Dame! Is the trip for anything in particular? My son made it to Europe in high school as well, as part of a Colorado band assembled from several high schools. They went to (and performed in) six or seven countries. No surprise, upon returning he promptly announced he wanted to move to Switzerland.

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    1. Oh, wow! And did he move to Switzerland? Not that I’d blame him, but, wowsa!

      She’s just with the high school for their annual trip simply because. 🙂

      I too left my camera atop the TP holder. Sadly, no luck on my return visit. :/ Glad for you though!

      You LIVED in Rome? That’s news to me. How did that go down?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. No, our son never moved to Switzerland but he still talks about it. His most recent job will have him traveling to Europe so maybe he’ll get the chance after all. My living in Rome was my junior year in college at Notre Dame. Their five-year architecture degree includes the junior year across the pond instead of on campus. Will I admit that aspect of the degree influenced the decision of which degree I chose in college? I’ll never tell 😉

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  9. What an incredible read! The details about the engineering of Santa Maria dei Fiore’s dome are mind-blowing—I never thought about how much planning goes into creating something so grand. It kind of makes me think about how I outsource even the simplest tasks, like hiring a service to handle my dog’s backyard business (not exactly on par with Renaissance architecture, but you get the idea!). If only I had Brunelleschi’s genius for tackling big projects!

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    1. I need to correct my attribution; Brunelleschi was the architect/engineer of the dome (while Arnolfo di Cambio gets the credit for the cathedral itself, two hundred years earlier). But I agree; Brunelleschi’s genius allowed for the double-dome design, which is the only way a structure that big could support itself without imploding. BTW, the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building has the same design. Hats off to Filippo!

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  10. Love these virtual cathedral tours, Dave. The intricate designs, workmanship, and attention to detail never fail to amaze. And the awe of place must surely augment one’s awe of God to worship in such glorious surroundings. / Congratulations on YOUR perseverance to finish the LEGO Notre Dame. It too has included amazing intricacy!

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    1. I need to cover one or two more cathedrals before my LEGO model comes to a close. These amazing structures deserve words of reverence!

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