Climbing the Duomo
On Day Three in Florence we set out to climb the Duomo. It’s that big thing in the middle of town that looks like an enormous football half buried in a cathedral. It’s the tallest structure in Florence. An Italian architect told me that there is a law against building anything taller than the Duomo in Florence. There was a long line of tourists waiting when we got there but it moved along. Once inside the duomo climbers made their way up a narrow stone stairway what must have been the equivalent of ten stories just to get to the bottom of the dome – where it starts to curve inwards. There’s a catwalk so you can get a good look at all the painting somebody did up there – tons of angels and people praying and big red demons devouring all the unfortunate chumps who obviously didn’t pray enough! Maybe if my church growing up had had paintings of demons devouring human flesh I might have been more excited about attending.
The Duomo is actually a dome within a dome, so you walk on stairs built on the inner dome and the outer dome is over your head.
They say it’s 463 steps but it seems more like 4,000 – it’s the Mount Everest of cathedral tours. The architect, Brunelleschi, obviously had not anticipated that his Duomo would one day be invaded by a never-ending stream of rabid tourists – there’s only one narrow stairway up to the top – so the only way up is also the only way down. It’s a fire marshal’s nightmare come true! The stairway is so narrow that you can’t even pass someone on the stairway. One aggressive group has to make its way up or down while another group has to wait on the landing. At times, tourists began to temperamental - it must be hellish during ‘high tourist season.’ I’m not really complaining. I work in the public schools in Brooklyn so I used to climbing a lot of stairs. They wouldn’t make you climb this many stairs in Vegas! In Vegas, they’d have an escalator installed with a wet bar and a cocktail waitress on each landing – and of course, a paramedic standing by in case you overdid it at the all-you-can-eat lasagna buffet.
There was light at the top of the stairway but the descending tourists had taken control of the thoroughfare. It seemed like they would never stop coming. This observation deck must be huge, I was thinking to myself, and why this mass exodus right when we are only ten steps from our goal? Is there some guy up there in a trench coat exposing himself? Actually, I didn’t think of that possibility then, I just thought of that now, but wouldn’t it have been great if I had thought of it then? I could have started screaming hysterically, “There’s a man exposing himself on the observation deck!” That would have got people out of my way! Then Amy and I could have had the entire Florence skyline to ourselves. On the downside, dozens of tourists would probably have been trampled to death in the ensuing stampede and who knows, maybe a few particularly religious individuals might have purposely thrown themselves over the railing to certain death just to avoid seeing a man’s genitals. I could be stuck in an Italian prison for the rest of my life for one childish prank! I’d wanted to spend more time in Europe but this was not exactly what I had in mind. It just goes to show you: be careful what you wish for!
Suffice it to say, we finally gained access to the stairway and arrived on top of the Duomo. The view was fantastic. There was room to walk around and there were no disgusting perverts scaring away the tourists who had struggled so hard get there. In Vegas, there are disgusting perverts everywhere you turn, so everything balances out in the end. This is the life lesson that I am here to share.
After our descent from the Duomo we had some excellent pizza at a snack shop a few blocks away. I remember as a kid hearing people say that yes, pizza was invented in Italy but it didn’t taste good – Americans improved pizza so that it would taste better. And as a gullible kid I guess I believed them. Maybe it was some xenophobic propaganda. . I asked Amy about it and she told me that she had been in Italy before and that it was true – the pizza was different back then. I’m still skeptical. Should I believe her or stick to my own little conspiracy theory?
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Walls of the Cathedral
Demon devouring Sinners!
Stairway inside the Duomo
Panoramic view
Campanile