Monitoring underway at Florence Cathedral

The interior walls of Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and, for the first time, the drum of the dome, are undergoing checks to ascertain the state of their conservation to date. The monitoring is expected to take place over the next three weeks and will include checks of the drum from February 4 to 8.

To monitor the drum, beyond the reach of the two cranes to be used inside the cathedral, workers and restorers trained in “acrobatic construction,” that is, working without the use of scaffoldings or aerial platforms, will scale the 60 metres up to the dome.

The project is part of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore’s yearly monitoring of the interior walls, while the exterior surfaces of all its monuments (the cathedral, Brunelleschi’s dome, Giotto’s bell tower and the baptistery) are monitored twice a year, at the beginning and end of winter. The 2019 checks are set for May 6 to 31 and October 7 to 31.