Kursaal & Ausonia

Florence’s dome is a wonder, something incredible, for the time and for us today.
The genius of this construction was an old (for the time, because he was 40 years old) goldsmith who had visionary ideas on how to cover the big hole that there was just above the main altar of Florence Cathedral: Santa Maria del Fiore.

Climbing up Brunelleschi’s dome is a MUST when visiting Florence.

Still today it is the LARGEST dome ever built (larger than the dome of the US Capitol, St. Paul's in London, or even St. Peter's in Rome). If you read the book, you get to know not only  the technicalities of the construction  like the fact that Brunelleschi used no wooden centering or flying buttresses, which was totally radical for the time, that he and his bricklayers used a unique herringbone pattern when laying the bricks that is clearly visible today but especially you get a great story, filled with details about everyday life in 15th century Italy: about food, shopping, brickmaking, transportation...) and about a man who used his intuition, faith and genius to propose a revolutionary method of building this famous dome.

The book is exciting (when tracing the progress of the dome’s construction) and for sure fascinating.

"Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing....Fascinating." Los Angeles Times