Final outing of the Baptistery’s oldest doors

At 1am last night, the Florence Baptistery’s monumental south doors were successfully transported from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. Now fully restored, Andrea Pisano’s masterpiece will be on display again from December 9, 2019.

The first of the doors left the Opificio delle Pietre Dure at 11pm and, with a crowd of curious onlookers in tow, crawled down via degli Alfani towards piazza Duomo. At around 11:45 pm, the lorries and cranes returned for the second portal. The complex operation of installing them in a purpose-made case in the museum’s Sala del Paradiso begins tomorrow.

The oldest of the Baptistery doors were fashioned between 1330 and 1336 by the great 14th-century sculptor Andrea Pisano, known as the “master of doors”. Around eight tonnes of bronze and gold, they stand almost five metres high and nearly three metres wide, and 20 of their 28 quatrefoil panels depict episodes from the life of St. John the Baptist, patron saint of the Baptistery and Florence.

The renovation was made possible by the Opera del Duomo Museum, who funded the entire project of removal, restoration, transport and installation.