Statues at eye level
What was carved for thirty metres' distance, met face to face.
23vita — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Stefano Stabile — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Luistxo — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Luistxo — CC BY-SA 4.0
After the interior, around the roof — but smartest as the midday refuge: dim, cool, quiet halls while sun and queues peak outside.
Forty-five minutes repay what the cathedral cannot give: closeness. The detail seen here transforms your second look at the façades.
Through the Royal Palace courtyard south of the cathedral — small signs, entry by scanning the same Duomo ticket.
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The Duomo Museum in the neighbouring Royal Palace is the cathedral's six-century treasury: original statues brought down from the façades for safekeeping and shown at eye level — faces, monsters and saints carved by uncounted generations to be seen from afar, startling in their close-up detail. Here too are the old stained-glass panels piece by piece, gold and ivory treasures, a huge wooden model of the cathedral that guided builders for centuries, and the original first Madonnina in beaten copper, predecessor of the copy now on the summit. Entry comes inside the cathedral's own ticket — effectively the free chapter most visitors skip, its dim modern halls a rest after the piazza's clamour.
What was carved for thirty metres' distance, met face to face.
The guardian's original beaten copper.
The centuries-old model the cathedral was built by.
Piazza del Duomo 12, 20122 Milan