Florence Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink, bordered by white, and has an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival façade by Emilio De Fabris.
Andrea Palladio was an Italian Renaissance architect active in the Venetian Republic. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily Vitruvius, is widely considered to be one of the most influential individuals in the history of architecture. While he designed churches and palaces, he was best known for country houses and villas. His teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise, The Four Books of Architecture, gained him wide recognition.
The Basilica di San Lorenzo is one of the largest churches of Florence, Italy, situated at the centre of the main market district of the city, and it is the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III. It is one of several churches that claim to be the oldest in Florence, having been consecrated in 393 AD, at which time it stood outside the city walls. For three hundred years it was the city's cathedral, before the official seat of the bishop was transferred to Santa Reparata.
The Mole Antonelliana is a major landmark building in Turin, Italy, named after its architect, Alessandro Antonelli. A mole in Italian is a building of monumental proportions.
Guglielmo Caccia called il Moncalvo was an Italian painter of sacred subjects in a Mannerist style.
Saronno is a comune of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Varese. It received the honorary title of city with a presidential decree in 1960. With an estimated population of 39351 inhabitants, it is the most densely populated among the big municipalities in its province.
Sant'Andrea delle Fratte is a 17th-century basilica church in Rome, Italy, dedicated to St. Andrew. The Cardinal Priest of the Titulus S. Andreae Apostoli de Hortis is Ennio Antonelli.
Cattolica is a town and comune in the Province of Rimini, Italy, with 16,233 inhabitants as of 2007.
Novara is the capital city of the province of Novara in the Piedmont region in northwest Italy, to the west of Milan. With 101,916 inhabitants, it is the second most populous city in Piedmont after Turin. It is an important crossroads for commercial traffic along the routes from Milan to Turin and from Genoa to Switzerland. Novara lies between the streams Agogna and Terdoppio in northeastern Piedmont, 50 km (31 mi) from Milan and 95 km (59 mi) from Turin. It is only 15 km (9.3 mi) distant from the river Ticino, which marks the border with Lombardy region.
The Tempio della Beata Vergine della Ghiara, also known as Basilica della Madonna della Ghiara, is a church in Reggio Emilia, northern Italy. The building is the property of the comune (municipality) of the city.
Alessandro Antonelli was an Italian architect of the 19th century. His most famous works are the Mole Antonelliana in Turin and both the Novara Cathedral and the Basilica of St. Gaudenzio in Novara.
Saint Gaudentius was a bishop of Novara, considered the first of that city. Tradition states that he was born to a pagan family at Ivrea, and was then converted to Christianity by Eusebius of Vercelli. Some sources say that Eusebius ordained Gaudentius a priest, and that Gaudentius was sent to Novara by Eusebius to assist a Christian priest named Laurence (Laurentius) there.
The Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Agatha, usually known as the Catania Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Catania, Sicily, southern Italy. It was the seat of the Bishops of Catania until 1859, when the diocese was elevated to an archdiocese, and since then has been the seat of the Archbishops of Catania.
The Basilica of San Fedele in Como is located in the city center. The present Romanesque church dates from 1120 and is dedicated to the Fidelis of Como.
Tivoli Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral, dedicated to Saint Lawrence, in Tivoli, Lazio, Italy. It is the seat of the bishop of Tivoli.
The early domes of the Middle Ages, particularly in those areas recently under Byzantine control, were an extension of earlier Roman architecture. The domed church architecture of Italy from the sixth to the eighth centuries followed that of the Byzantine provinces and, although this influence diminishes under Charlemagne, it continued on in Venice, Southern Italy, and Sicily. Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel is a notable exception, being influenced by Byzantine models from Ravenna and Constantinople. The Dome of the Rock, an Umayyad Muslim religious shrine built in Jerusalem, was designed similarly to nearby Byzantine martyria and Christian churches. Domes were also built as part of Muslim palaces, throne halls, pavilions, and baths, and blended elements of both Byzantine and Persian architecture, using both pendentives and squinches. The origin of the crossed-arch dome type is debated, but the earliest known example is from the tenth century at the Great Mosque of Córdoba. In Egypt, a "keel" shaped dome profile was characteristic of Fatimid architecture. The use of squinches became widespread in the Islamic world by the tenth and eleventh centuries. Bulbous domes were used to cover large buildings in Syria after the eleventh century, following an architectural revival there, and the present shape of the Dome of the Rock's dome likely dates from this time.
Italian Renaissance domes were designed during the Renaissance period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. Beginning in Florence, the style spread to Rome and Venice and made the combination of dome, drum, and barrel vaults standard structural forms.
Domes built in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries relied primarily on empirical techniques and oral traditions rather than the architectural treatises of the time, but the study of dome structures changed radically due to developments in mathematics and the study of statics. Analytical approaches were developed and the ideal shape for a dome was debated, but these approaches were often considered too theoretical to be used in construction.
The Basilica of San Bernardino is a religious building located in L'Aquila, Italy. The church was built, with the adjacent cloister, between 1454 and 1472 in honor of St Bernardino of Siena. The facade was built by Silvestro dall'Aquila and later passed to Cola dell'Amatrice, reaching completion in 1542. It is a notable example of 16th century architecture combining Greek, Latin and Christian influences, divided into three orders, consisting of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian styles. The corpse of the saint is guarded inside the church in a mausoleum built by Silvestro dell'Aquila.
