Showing posts with label Milan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Milan. Show all posts

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Milan’s Duomo – The Inside Story

Milan, Italy  - “What can you tell us?” asked friends who are planning a trip there next year. 

So many things come to mind – fashion and food among them – but what symbolizes this capital of the Lombardy region in Northern Italy for us is its Duomo (ˈdwōmō); Cathedral.

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Each time we’ve visited the city with a 1.35 million population, we’ve been two tourist pilgrims, setting out on foot - just as religious pilgrims must have done before us - making our way to the imposing Gothic Italian structure eagerly seeking the first sight of its towering spires.

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We entered Piazza del Duomo at the back of the Cathedral last fall, our mid-morning arrival before buses disgorged the masses of fellow tourists who fill the square, each angling for the best shot of the building that stands 148-feet (45 meters) tall and took six centuries to complete.

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At this time of day there were no lines waiting to enter the Duomo dedicated to Santa Maria Nascente.

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This seat of the Archbishop of Milan is crowned with 135 spires. On a previous visit we took the rooftop tour and walked among those intricately sculpted towers – it was amazing and we highly recommend it.

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It isn’t until you go inside that you grasp just how enormous this place is and you understand why its construction took 600 years.

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At 5’10” The Scout shrinks in size when compared to those massive pillars.

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And how about that wall of organ pipes?

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The stained glass windows which tower over visitors are works of art that tell through their illustrations the stories of the Virgin and Saints and, as such, were once considered  Biblia Pauperum, a pauper’s bible – easy to read and appealing.

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The Duomo’s 3,400 statues and 700 figures are decorating elements typical of  all Gothic Cathedrals, used to send the message of Christian salvation (sometimes, rather violently depicted it seems, as illustrated in the photo above!)

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And other times quite whimsical as we noted with this fellow – one of many such figures on the Duomo’s exterior.

That’s it for Travel Photo Thursday at Budget Travelers Sandbox and Travel Photo Discovery updated each Monday.

If You Go:

Map picture
Duomo Milano
Piazza el Duomo, Milano
www.duomomilano.it

As always, thanks for the time you spent with us today. Happy Travels!

Friday, October 5, 2012

Hurtling through time and space to Italy

Monday already seems ages ago. Maybe it is because on this Friday afternoon we are giving our senses a break and spending some time at ‘home’ in Bologna, Italy. Time - moving forward, thinking back - really does take on new dimensions when you travel.

MilBolg2012 002 Monday was the day we said farewell to our summer in the Pacific Northwest and set out to experience for at least a bit of time, autumn in Italy.

Aboard this KLM flight we hurtled from Vancouver, B.C. at 35,000 feet above the earth at a speed of 600+ miles per hour. Quite mind boggling, if you think about it. 


We arrived in Amsterdam 30 minutes early, we’d flown so rapidly, but then found no gate available so we actually entered the terminal at the time we’d been scheduled to arrive.
 
MilBolg2012 005 From Amsterdam, the land of tulips (as captured in this photo of a wall mural) we caught another flight that would take us to our destination: Milan, Italy.

While my wristwatch reminded us it was the middle of the night Monday  (we’d left home at 8 a.m.), we’d traveled through both space and time to find ourselves 9 hours ahead of that time piece and in the middle of Tuesday.  Amazing when you think about it.


MilBolg2012 006 We caught our favorite low-cost airline, Easy Jet, which took less than three hours to get us to our first stop on our journey: Milan. We arrived there 24 hours on the dot from when we’d left home.
I’ll tell you more in future days.  Ciao! for now.. . 

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