"What a wonder it is! So grand, so solumn, so vast! ....And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems a delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath." -- Mark Twain from 'Innocents Abroad' 1867
As we revel in our last day as Italian tourists, we walk first through the city arch complete with thundering horses overhead, advance further through and then beyond the castle walls, proceed further down the active city street (complete with a vegetable carver, a marionette show, several accordian concerts et. al.) and there she sits, according to the website Sacred Places, the second largest Catholic Cathedral in all the world, Duomo di Milano.... said to comfortably seat 40,000. Built over the span of at least 6 centuries upon the site of an earlier sacred place.
What's it like to be able to enter the Cathedral on Easter Sunday afternoon? Words are not sufficient to describe the experience. Dark. Hushed. Noticably cooler. Soaring. Marbled floors. Flickering candles. Stained glass. Choral antiphons. Worship services were underway, but due to the absolute enormity of the space, there was more than sufficient distance to have both worship underway in the nave and literally throngs of tourists investigating history in reverant, marveling silence along the interior edges.
Reading today on the web, I learn that the carved human figure 'statues' perched on each of the spires are indeed life-size. In person they look like wisps of characters, suspended in the air -- high over head. Even standing in the square it's hard to imagine the perspective of how huge everything is. My picture of the ribbon of flickering candles, lit with meters of individual prayers, is as moving to me personally as the Gothic marble carvings.
leomecHI Debbie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting my blog and supporting Sammy. I love your blog and what you do...you mast make so many lives brighter!
Katy
xxx
Oh the architecture... This is why I miss Europe so much, there is so much beautiful architecture you will never see anywhere else. Wish they would do it now as well, cold building made of glass and blocks of cement have their own appeal, but they just don't look as grand to me.
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What a thrill!!! It's a two comment post. Katy you're most welcome. He is a Super-Hero in my eyes and that makes you simply brilliant. Not everyone gets to mother a Super-Hero.
ReplyDeleteArmada. I miss the architecture already. Everywhere you look there is a still life in the making: door knobs, window boxes -- even the arket places are filled with beauty. I feel so fortunate for having had the experience.