On this side of the cathedral, where the queue for the entrance turns its back on you, an ox head sits in the marble above the side door, horns forward and muzzle pointed at the house across the way.
The polite explanation calls it a tribute to the oxen that dragged the marble down the hills for years. Florentines prefer a different version. One of the builders is said to have had an affair with the wife of the baker opposite, and when the man took it to court, the builder set a horned head at exactly the height where the baker opened his door every morning.
From the same spot your eye runs up the facade to the dome. For more than fifty years a gap forty-five metres wide stayed open at the centre of this cathedral, because nobody knew how to span something like it.
won the commission in 1418 over his old rival by refusing to explain his method. According to , he challenged the committee to stand an egg upright on a marble slab, and when nobody managed it he tapped the end flat. His answer was two shells, one over the other, with a between them, so each layer of stone held itself in place. The cross-section drawing with this story shows how it was built, with the stairway in the gap you still climb through today.
We cross the square towards the octagonal building facing the front of the cathedral.
Sources. Story: Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore (Cupola del Brunelleschi, Porta dei Cornacchini); Treccani (Filippo Brunelleschi) Photos: Cross-section of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
