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Duomo (cathedral) of Como

The construction, on plan of the intelvese Lorenzo of Spazzi, begun in 1396 on the area of the Romanesque basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The grayish marble already employed in roman age, comes from the hollow ones of Musso.
The jobs, durations beyond three hundred years, ended in 1740. Peter from Breggia worked to you between 1426 and 1453, from the 1457 Florio from Bontà and Luchino Scarabota - author of the rosone - they constructed the facade that conceived in three parts. The cycles of edificazione of the cathedral are substantially two: the period of cohabitation of the complex of S. Greater Maria, whose sucessiva demolition allowed to the yard of inglobare the freed area; and the period that gives XV the century proceeds until the days ours, in which the demolition of S. was looked at Greater Maria but the southern flank element carrying and shared from the body partially pulled down of the Broletto. The start of the jobs, with the four pillars orients executes them from Spazzi, taken foot from gotici cues and was limited from the preesistente building; the successive phase pushed out the complex to one development oriented towards east with baroque and rinascimentali elements.
The building is to Latin cross, left again in three navate from cruciform pillars on which they rest arches pointed. Of XVII the century they are the apse and wings transetto relative: Filippo Richini Maria from 1627 to 1633 realized the skillful side, and Carl Buzzi from 1653 to the 1669 that left. To sides of the main portale, a privileged position came classified to the two large comaschi pagani ones: Plinio Vecchio and Plinio the Young person. The two statues, works of the Rodari, join to others of the same artist, present are in facade are in the inner ones. The scultore Tommaso Rodari from Maroggia planned, 1484, the flanks and the lateral portali, the left of which comes said "door of the frog". Also Amuzio from Lurago worked to the complexes decorated, contributing to you above all in the system of the facade.
To the inside they are admirable the monumental ligneo altar dedicated to Sant' Abbondio of XVI the century - in the quarter lived of the skillful navata one -, the tapestries of the XVI-XVII century on cardboards of Giuseppe Arcimboldi, the Adoration of the Magi of the Luini of bergognonesca Lombardic school, with influences of the Bramantino and, still, the Escape in Egypt di Gaudenzio Ferrari. The two organs of the fifth span go back to the six hundred, while the two lions of the sec. XII, that acquasantiere resist, they come from the diroccata church of Saint Greater Maria. The Dome deep harmonically in himself varies styles, dominant are but the gotico of the facade of the piedicroce and the navate ones, and the rinascimentale of the flanks and the external apses.
The cupola that is raised for 75 meters, rivisitata in 1770, but the work of the Juvara, that it preannounced in the clear measure of the parts the norms of the successive neoclassicismo, still maintains the wide effects looks on to to us intentional from the author. The typical East-West guideline comes inner taken advantage of in the game of reverberates that dipana from the rosone, to the cupola of the transetto, from vetrate the work of the Bertini family, to the apse and the chorus, game that give the albori it continues until the lights serotine.