Florence Cathedral, Italy

　　Florence in the 13th century was one of the most powerful urban republics in Italy. In 1293, the city guilds revolted one after another, and the aristocratic power was excluded from the regime. In order to commemorate the victory of this civilian struggle, the municipality decided to build a cathedral “commensurate with the wealth and strength of the citizens”. Build the grandest and most splendid edifice imaginable by human craftsmanship, and shape it to be worthy of a mind that is so great in the spirit of a civic united in unity.” The Cathedral of Florence was thus the guild of the nobility at the end of the thirteenth century. It was built as a monument to the republic after taking power from its hands.
　　The Cathedral is located in Florence, Italy. It was built between 1296 and 1462. It is an architectural treasure of the Italian Renaissance. Like the Cathedral of Pisa, it is also a building complex, consisting of the main church, the baptistery and the bell tower. The bell tower is 13.7 meters square and 84 meters high. It was designed by the painter Giotto, so it is also called “Giotto’s Bell Tower”; the baptistery is an octagon with a diameter of 27.5 meters, the interior is covered by a dome, and it is about 31 meters high. , the top of the sub-appearance is a gentle 8-sided cone, located opposite the main church.
　　The main point here is the main church. The main church is also commonly known as the “Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore”, its design and construction process, technical achievements and artistic features, especially the full and powerful dome shape of the main church, as the beginning of the history of Italian Renaissance architecture. The logo reflects the pioneering spirit and heroic bearing of the new era of the Renaissance.
　　The octagonal dome of Florence Cathedral is one of the largest domes in the world, with an inner diameter of 43 meters and a height of more than 30 meters. The huge dome rests on a complex staggered framework, the lower half is made of stone and the upper half is made of bricks. In order to highlight the dome, the designer specially built a 12-meter-high drum base under the dome. In order to reduce the side thrust of the dome, the frame dome is divided into inner and outer layers, and the middle is hollow. The sophistication and technical level of the cathedral’s architecture surpasses that of ancient Roman and Byzantine architecture, and its dome is recognized as the pioneering work of Italian Renaissance architecture, reflecting the spirit of the Renaissance. The reason for this is that, for a long time, the Catholic Church has regarded centralized planes and domes as pagan temple structures and strictly rejected them. Although the plane of the main church of Florence is still in the shape of a Latin cross, it broke through the prohibition of the church and designed the music stage to be approximately centralized, and the top of the church was designed with a dome. Although the power of the Catholic Church was very weak in Florence at that time, the spirit of designers and craftsmen who ignored the precepts of the church required great courage and high consciousness. Therefore, it is a symbol of breaking through the spiritual tyranny of the church in architecture; secondly, the semi-circular dome of the Romanesque church, usually placed in the middle of the building, is half exposed in appearance, and is not an important modeling method for the church. However, the dome of the main church of Florence, borrowing the technique of the Romanesque church, used the drum base to show the entire dome, including the lighting pavilion, with a total height of 107 meters, becoming the center of the entire city outline, which was unprecedented at that time. . Therefore, it is a symbol of the original spirit of the Renaissance; finally, both in terms of structure and construction, the construction technology and construction difficulty of the dome of the main cathedral of Florence are few, for example, in order to highlight the dome, 12 It is unprecedented to put such a large dome on the drum base for a section of drum base that is one meter high. Although the wall of the drum base is 4.9 meters thick, effective measures must be taken to reduce the side thrust of the dome and reduce its weight. The methods used are: first, the dome profile adopts a double sagittal shape; second, it uses a skeleton coupon structure, the dome is divided into two layers, the inner and outer layers, and the middle is empty. These two points obviously draw on the experience of ancient Roman architecture and Gothic architecture, but it is a new creation, so it is also a symbol of the general progress of science and technology in the Renaissance.
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　　The Cathedral of Florence was the greatest pride in the life of the designer Brunelleschi (1379-1446). Brunileschi was born in a family of guild craftsmen, proficient in machinery and casters, is an outstanding sculptor, painter, craftsman and scholar, has made achievements in perspective and mathematics, and also designed some buildings. He was the kind of multi-talented giant that was characteristic of the Renaissance. In order to design the dome, in the trend of learning from classical culture at that time, he stayed in Rome for a few years, forgetting to eat and sleep, devote himself to studying ancient archery techniques, surveying and mapping ancient ruins, even a groove for placing iron tenons. Returning to Florence, he modeled domes and scaffolding, developed detailed structural and construction plans, and designed several types of vertical transport machinery. He not only considered issues such as the dome’s removal of rainwater, lighting and setting up small stairs, but also wind, storm and earthquake factors, and proposed corresponding measures. Finally, in 1420, Brunelleschi was awarded the design rights for the project in a competition called by the Florentine authorities with the participation of French, English, Spanish and Germanic architects, and construction began in the same year. He went through the entire construction process, and in 1431, completed the dome, followed by the construction of the lighting pavilion on top, and died nearing completion. The pavilion was completed in 1470. Eventually, Brunileschi’s tomb was built respectfully in the crypt of the main church.