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The first time I saw the Duomo di Milano up close, I was annoyed at myself for almost skipping it. Milan isn’t the city that promotes its churches. Instead, people talk about the Quadrilatero della Moda, how the aperitivo culture defines the city, and how Milan moves at the pace of Rome or Florence.
Yet here I was, planning to take a quick 20-minute look at the Duomo di Milano en route from the train station for lunch. I was wrong in my estimation of the true value of this landmark, at least initially – it took me four minutes in the piazza to realize I was wrong.
The Facade Doesn’t Prepare You
Photographs of the Duomo don’t do it justice. As you walk up to it, it’s the density of the statues on the exterior of the cathedral that gets you. More than three thousand statues took nearly six hundred years of construction from several architects to complete – none of the structures look like they came from a single decision by the city’s architects.
I’d sorted my tickets for Milan Cathedral a few days before arriving in Milan. When I arrived around 8:30 in the morning, there was already a long line outside the ticket office – forty or fifty people in line for what would be an hour of their morning devoted to the cathedral. I walked past the line entirely and went up the steps to start my tour of one of Italy’s most famous cathedrals.
What’s Actually Up There
The rooftop gets underestimated. There are no viewing platforms from which to appreciate this cathedral architecture. Instead, you find yourself walking among the spires to examine some of the statues that adorned the structures when they were first built.
The weathering of each of these spires is different. Some of the stonework is remarkably fine on some of the structures. Other portions of the spires have endured centuries of Milan pollution and rainfall since their construction in the 1400s.
At some point when I was on the rooftop, I found a step on one of the smaller spires that I ended up sitting on for twenty minutes or so, marveling at the city that sprawled beneath me. The Galleria was adorned with glass and wrought iron walkways that reflected the morning sunlight that fell on the city a few blocks away.
On particularly clear mornings, the range of the Alps could be spotted in the distance, a line of pale grey mountains that contrasted with the flat reputation that many have of Milan city. There’s a specific kind of good travel morning when you stop checking the time – and this was that.
Underneath
The interior of the church is a different register entirely. The space is dim after the rooftop, and enormous in a way that no photograph can do justice to. Fifty-two columns support the vault of the church, one for each week of the year; some of the largest surviving collections of stained glass in Italy.
I’m not religious, but as I moved through the cathedral, I found myself speaking quieter than I needed to, precisely in the space designed to make people feel small in comparison to the divine. I wandered the side aisles slowly, taking in all of the carved decorations that lined the area. There were tombs and reliquaries throughout the cathedral, many of which contained saints that I did not recognize.
The Rest of the Trip
Milan was the first stop on a longer trip throughout northern Italy. However, the visit to the Duomo ended up influencing the rest of the trip, forcing me to take the extra ten minutes to read the ticket details to understand what it entailed. This sounds so obvious when stated in writing. However, it was not obvious when I visited the Colosseum a week later, as I purchased the wrong ticket tier.
By the time I got to Rome, I was using a proper travel guide like TicketsnTea to compare the Vatican Museums tickets – to see what was included in each and to get tourist insights on the best times to visit that particular attraction.
If You’re Going
Allow yourself more time to see the Duomo than the travel guidebook usually does. Most give it an hour, which is not enough time to go up to the top. Head to the church early to avoid the crowds. If you’d like to avoid the line to go through the ticket counter at the Duomo, book your tickets in advance.
And once you’re on the rooftop: resist the temptation to head back down. The rooftop is one of the only spots in the world where you can walk across a cathedral rooftop. Most travel itineraries allocate the Duomo fifteen minutes of your time – more than enough to see it from the ground, but not to walk across the rooftop to the other side of the structure.
