On the Roof of the Duomo

I had the choice of walking to the top of the cathedral for about $8 dollars or of taking an elevator to the top for about $12.  I am afraid that I sprang for the elevator ride.  I didn't think that I would be in much of a position to appreciate the architecture if I had had to climb 300 feet in 100 degree weather.

As it was, I about had a claustrophobia attack in the elevator.  Because the elevator was built within the existing structure, it, along with all of the passageways to get to it, were very narrow.  It was just barely possible for two people to pass each other in most of the corridors.  The elevator was so tiny that they only let three people into it, besides the attendant, and you more or less had to hug everybody just to fit in.  But it was pretty impressive once you got up to the roof.  You could walk around most of the top of the cathedral, on narrow stone walkways, in amongst the statues and gargoyles.

This pictures shows just how narrow the hallways around the roof were.


It does make for very picturesque pathways, though.

The roof of the cathedral was really, really high and there wasn't really anything keeping you from falling off the side except some waist-high stone balustrades.  I spent a lot of time creeping around the inside edges of the walk-ways, staying as close to the wall as I could.  The advice "Be Held by Hand" seemed worth taking.

A lot of the spikes on the Duomo have statues on top of them.  I don't know what they all are but they seem to be of a variety of figures, from saints to standard bearers.

Besides the Spires, there were statues in niches in the wall and on pedestals all over the roof.  A lot of them you couldn't even see from the ground.

Everything that wasn't covered in statues was covered in curlicues and lace.

One of the really beautiful things about the cathedral was its gargoyles and drain-pipes.  They weren't deformed monsters like in the Hunchback of Notre Dame movie.  They were really lovely, carved dragons, and dogs, and angels.

I thought that this one looked like that giant dog-monster from the Never Ending Story.

If you really like one of the gargoyles, you can sponsor it.  Sponsoring helps to pay for the care and protection of the gargoyle and helps to pay for any renovation that needs doing.

This video is long--it is about 8 minutes long--and it is essentially a slide show of pictures of the cathedral.  Some of the pictures are almost exactly the same pictures that I took, but it does have some pictures that show the roof a bit better, including how you could walk up and down the slanted roof, very close to the edge.