The Duomo

Greetings, P2D2!

            It is I, Lego Man!

           

             Today, Ginny and I arrived in Florence, the second part of our trip. Florence is a large city that's not very far away from Reggio Emilia. It takes about two hours, by train. (Unless you take an express train, which is what we did. Ginny was very impatient to get here.) Italian trains are fast, and usually pretty crowded. Florence is a very, very old city. It is Ginny’s favorite place in the world, apart from Boston. She used to live here, in fact, so she sort of knows her way around. Lego Man has never seen this before, though. It is really something.

            Florence is known for having been a place of great thinkers, scientists, artists and inventors during something called the Renaissance. Renaissance is another way of saying “a rebirth”. And a “rebirth” is basically another way of saying “trying something for the second time, and doing an even better job than you did the first time around”. The Renaissance happened a really long time ago (after the dinosaurs, but hundreds of years before your grandparents and great-grandparents were born) and it was a pretty exciting time to be anywhere in Europe. But especially in Florence. Lots of great thinkers were working in Florence at the same time, and were able to work together—and share their ideas—which is part of why the city is so beautiful. (Ginny is hollering something, from across the room, about how this is why P2 teachers are always telling you to work together and cooperate, because two heads can often be better than one.)

            A lot of the time, especially with artists, there was a patron (or a very rich person) who would ask an artist to make them a beautiful piece of art, or even a building. The patron would talk to the artist, and would pay the artist to work very hard at creating something for them. The patron was the person with all the money. (Boring) While the artist was the person who could actually think of a way to make something beautiful. (Not boring!)  Your favorite Ninja Turtles are actually named after some of Florence’s greatest Renaissance artists—Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raffaello and Donatello were all artists who lived and worked in this city. Also, they weren’t turtles. Or ninjas. They were just men. But they probably did love pizza.

            One of the biggest pieces of artwork in Florence is something called the Duomo, which is the largest things that you can see on Florence’s skyline. You know what the Boston skyline, and skyscrapers look like? Can you think of some of the buildings that you really notice?  The John Hancock Tower and the Prudential Tower are two of the buildings that might really stand out, because they’re so tall. But those are made with steel and glass, and were built when your mommies and daddies were all still just babies. The Duomo looks nothing like a modern skyscraper, and it wasn’t built with steel or glass; it’s made mostly out of wood, brick, and stone--and it was built about 600 years ago. The first version of it that was built actually fell down. You know how sad you all feel when one of your wonderful block structures comes apart? It was like that—only so, so much worse for the people living in Florence. The second Duomo is the tallest building in Florence; Florence has no skyscrapers, and most of the buildings in central Florence are as old as the Duomo. The Duomo is one of the trickiest things that has ever been built, on this planet. (No, Lego Man is not kidding.) Look at the shape of it…how do you think you might build something that’s shaped like an egg? Do you have any good guesses?

            Lots of artists and architects wanted to build the new Duomo, after the first one collapsed. There was even a contest to see who could come up with the best plan for how to build it…because building something that’s shaped like an egg is almost impossible. It topples very quickly. Try to imagine building something like that in the block area!

            The man who eventually came up with the best idea was a goldsmith and a clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi. He used brick, mortar, marble, chains, stone beams, and some very complicated long wooden bits as his building materials. The design that he eventually came up with was two circle-shaped masonry shells, stacked on top of one another, that grow smaller and smaller as you move towards the tippy top of the dome. Imagine two of the hula hoops in the Activity Room placed so that they overlap, then stack two more smaller overlapping Activity Room hula hoops on top of them…and you’ve got the basic idea. (Sort of. Lego Man is explaining this quite poorly.)

            When the big masonry circles were in place, they made a criss-crossed sort of pattern, which Brunelleschi filled in with some light bricks to keep the very top of the dome—the trickiest part—from caving in.

            Back in the 1400’s, they didn’t have the same kinds of cement mixers and cranes that we use now for big construction jobs…or even any of those Caterpillars that you guys love so much. Since he didn’t have too many choices, Brunelleschi had to invent a strange sort of a boat, with some pulleys, for lifting and lowering some of the marble and brick up from the ground to the top of the dome as he worked. He also invented a new hoist, with a tricky reverse gear, to use as his own kind of crane. It was so ugly that people called it Il Badalone…which means The Monster, in Italian.

            Ginny and I climbed to the top of the Duomo, after we walked around the ground floor for a long time. There are so many stairs; I had to ask her to carry me, because my legs are just way too short. It takes a long time to climb, and I started crying because I was so tired. She probably felt bad for me. When we got to the top of the dome, we could see the entire city from the top…along with the big river, the Arno, that curls through the center of the city.

            Can any of you make a monster at the writing table today? Or your own masterpiece in the block corner?

            Arrivederci!

            LEGO MAN (and Ginny)