Uploaded April 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
5) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Florence, Italy: for centuries, travelers have been coming here to gaze at the wonders of the Renaissance. Six hundred years ago, this city experienced a creative explosion unlike any other. Visionaries like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo flourished here, in an atmosphere that celebrated imagination and innovation.
Many believe the Renaissance began with the completion of the city's most visible landmark, the dome on the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Built 60 years before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, without the use of modern machines or materials, the dome is still the largest of its kind in the world. It's an icon shrouded in mystery, because no one knows exactly how it was constructed.
Certain features of the dome stand out. It's in the shape of a pointed arch, with eight sides rising to a central point, topped by an enormous marble lantern. But there is more to it than meets the eye. The exterior tiles conceal walls containing over four million bricks, and what appears to be a single, solid structure is actually two domes, one inside the other.
The interior dome covers an open space nearly half the length of a football field, while the outer shell rises 10 stories atop cathedral walls, themselves 170 feet high.
Questions about how the dome was built persist to this day. Six centuries ago, how could builders work at such great heights? How could they know the eight sides would meet in the center? And how did the steep brick walls hold together without collapsing?
“With the dome, Florence moves into an entirely different dimension. The dome becomes the hub of a new city, of a new world. This is so soaring, so daring, so confident, so absolute a structure, it's like a “Work of God”.”
But the dome is the work of a man, one of the most elusive and enigmatic geniuses of all time. His name was Filippo Brunelleschi. Trained as a goldsmith, he had no experience in architecture or building, yet he took on what seemed to be impossible: keeping 40,000 tons of masonry curving through the air without caving in to the floor below.
Experts are still trying to understand how he managed to defy gravity.
“He constructs the dome at a time where the technology should not have permitted it. How is it possible that he built the thing when he did? It just should not have been possible.”
By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi was a suspicious and secretive man. Unlike Leonardo, he left behind no notebooks, no drawings, no blueprints for later generations to study. So, for centuries, scholars have been trying to uncover the secret of Brunelleschi's dome.
Brunelleschi is so revered in Florence they hold a parade every year on the anniversary of his death. The destination: his tomb, within the great cathedral itself.
Leading the ceremony is Massimo Ricci, professor of architecture and engineering at the University of Florence. Ricci has spent 40 years of his life trying to understand the master's methods. For Ricci, Brunelleschi has become an obsession.
5) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Florence, Italy: for centuries, travelers have been coming here to gaze at the wonders of the Renaissance. Six hundred years ago, this city experienced a creative explosion unlike any other. Visionaries like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo flourished here, in an atmosphere that celebrated imagination and innovation.
Many believe the Renaissance began with the completion of the city's most visible landmark, the dome on the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Built 60 years before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, without the use of modern machines or materials, the dome is still the largest of its kind in the world. It's an icon shrouded in mystery, because no one knows exactly how it was constructed.
Certain features of the dome stand out. It's in the shape of a pointed arch, with eight sides rising to a central point, topped by an enormous marble lantern. But there is more to it than meets the eye. The exterior tiles conceal walls containing over four million bricks, and what appears to be a single, solid structure is actually two domes, one inside the other.
The interior dome covers an open space nearly half the length of a football field, while the outer shell rises 10 stories atop cathedral walls, themselves 170 feet high.
Questions about how the dome was built persist to this day. Six centuries ago, how could builders work at such great heights? How could they know the eight sides would meet in the center? And how did the steep brick walls hold together without collapsing?
“With the dome, Florence moves into an entirely different dimension. The dome becomes the hub of a new city, of a new world. This is so soaring, so daring, so confident, so absolute a structure, it's like a “Work of God”.”
But the dome is the work of a man, one of the most elusive and enigmatic geniuses of all time. His name was Filippo Brunelleschi. Trained as a goldsmith, he had no experience in architecture or building, yet he took on what seemed to be impossible: keeping 40,000 tons of masonry curving through the air without caving in to the floor below.
Experts are still trying to understand how he managed to defy gravity.
“He constructs the dome at a time where the technology should not have permitted it. How is it possible that he built the thing when he did? It just should not have been possible.”
By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi was a suspicious and secretive man. Unlike Leonardo, he left behind no notebooks, no drawings, no blueprints for later generations to study. So, for centuries, scholars have been trying to uncover the secret of Brunelleschi's dome.
Brunelleschi is so revered in Florence they hold a parade every year on the anniversary of his death. The destination: his tomb, within the great cathedral itself.
Leading the ceremony is Massimo Ricci, professor of architecture and engineering at the University of Florence. Ricci has spent 40 years of his life trying to understand the master's methods. For Ricci, Brunelleschi has become an obsession.
