Milan Cathedral

Milan Cathedral is in Milan, a big city in Italy.

It is a church made of white marble that looks a little pink. Its roof is covered with tall, pointy spires. On top of the tallest spire stands a shiny golden statue.

Milan Cathedral, which people in Milan call the Duomo, stands in the middle of the city, on a big square called Piazza del Duomo. Britannica says the spot is so central that all of Milan's main streets spread out from it.

It is a Gothic cathedral, a style with pointed arches, tall windows and spires. Its walls are covered in pale marble streaked with pink. Inside there is room for 40,000 people, and Britannica counts it among the world's largest Roman Catholic cathedrals. It also holds a record: more statues than any other building, 3,159 in all.

Britannica describes the cathedral as begun in 1386 and completed over five centuries, with the final details of its facade finished in 1965, on an ancient Roman site so central that the city's main streets radiate from it. Its area of about 11,706 square meters (126,000 square feet) makes it one of the largest Roman Catholic cathedrals, and its interior can hold 40,000 people.

The Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the body founded in 1387 to build and care for it, notes that it rose on the site of the ancient basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Tecla, whose remains are visible in its archaeological area, and calls it the most European of Gothic cathedrals, because of the workers it drew from across the continent. Britannica counts 3,159 statues, 2,245 of them on the exterior, more than on any other building in the world.

The roof has so many spires that it looks like a forest of stone!

Stone statues stand all over the walls. Inside, giant stone pillars hold up the roof. Visitors can even walk on the roof and look over the city.

Milan Cathedral is famous for its roof, which bristles with spires, gargoyles and marble statues. Visitors can go up and walk among them for great views of the city. On the tallest spire stands a golden statue called the Madonnina, the "little Madonna," covered in 3,900 pieces of gold leaf.

The building mixes styles from different centuries. The rounded back end is French Gothic, with pinnacles, flying buttresses and lacy stone window frames. Over the center is an eight-sided Renaissance dome with an 18th-century spire. Inside, five long aisles run toward the altar between enormous stone pillars.

Britannica reads the building as a visual contradiction: an eastern apse French Gothic in flavor, with pinnacles, flying buttresses and intricate tracery; an octagonal Renaissance cupola; an 18th-century spire; and a facade it calls Neoclassical, with bronze doors installed in the 20th century. The roof bursts with spires, gargoyles and marble statues and is open to visitors.

Inside, five great aisles run from the entrance to the altar between enormous pillars. The cathedral's best-known statue, the Madonnina, stands on the tallest spire, covered in 3,900 pieces of gold leaf. The Fabbrica still runs its own marble yard, where milling and finishing workers, ornamental marble workers and sculptors use both modern machine tools and hand finishing to make replacement stones and statues.

Today, the cathedral is still being cared for.

Sculptors carve new statues to replace old, worn ones. Lots of visitors come to the big square in front of it.

People from all over the world visit Milan Cathedral. The Veneranda Fabbrica, the same group founded in 1387, still looks after it. Its workers carve new marble pieces in a workshop, using both modern machines and hand tools.

The Fabbrica also still runs the Candoglia quarry. Restoring the cathedral never really stops: in 2016 a big project began to restore the dome and the structure that holds it up.

The Veneranda Fabbrica, more than six centuries after its founding, maintains the Candoglia quarry with specialist staff and modern technology, and its marble yard in the Certosa area produces ashlars, ornaments and statues; the sculptor, it says, remains irreplaceable for the finishing.

Restoration has been continuous: the great spire was restored in 1840 and again in the 1960s and 1970s, the tiburium pillars underwent a complex structural restoration, the apse and facade were restored late in the 20th century, and in 2016 the restoration of the tiburium and dome began.