I love the Duomo in Florence. I think the facade is a hideous, frilly, frosting that takes away from the grandeur of the dome itself. Even so, the duomo is an all time great. Close runners up are the Pantheon and the Colloseum (even though its ancient). While St. Peters certainly is beautiful, it's not in the same league in my list of favourites. I have a circle fetish, don't I? Hmmm ...

I'm sorry but I have to jump in here. If you are interested in Renaissance architecture and missed St. Peters in Rome it would be a tragedy. It is one of the most awe inspiring human creations on earth. The Duomo frilly? The Colosseum is an elipse. The cleaning of the Pantheon is almost complete! It is sensational!

Rome' cloisters have always impressed me. You might take a quick look at the ones at SS. Quattro Coronati, Via dei SS. Quattro (great brick work) and S. Maria della Pace, Via Arco della Pace 15 (pretty columns). They are nice places to escape the noise and traffic.

kakalena,
I do like the St.Peters Dome by MicaelAngelo, just not as much as Brunelleschi's in Florence. That said, the Piazza in front of St.Peters is magnificent. While the dome itself is magnificent - a red brick masterpiece with no adornments necessary to better it, the facade is, well, pink and pastel green. Its pretty by itself and would have been perfectly fine on another building, but 'pretty' does not go with The Dome. The Dome is a very masculine piece and should have been left alone, IMO. I love for example, that it isn't lit up at night - it doesn't need to be. Its grandeur and majesty need no embellishment. I am a huge fan of the dome of the Duomo, but am less than thrilled by the marble facade. I am no art expert and have absolutely no formal art training (i'm an engineer), and don't know art, but I know what I like.
It is said that Brunelleschi studied the Pantheon(did you know that near the top,the dome of the Pantheon is made of earthernware bottles - basically hollow tubes) before he built the Duomo and that Micaelangelo studied the Duomo before he built St.Peters dome. Micaelangelo is said to have said words to the effect "I go to build a larger dome but not a fairer one" about Brunelleschi's dome. Of course as it turned out, St. Peters Dome is not larger than the Duomo, but that was the original plan.
I would love to see the Pantheon complete.

Kakalena, I don't disagree with your list, my list is juat a little different at all. I do tend to appreciate the mechanics of the building as much as its visual appeal. Its one of my small eccentricities if you will. I know that the colloseum is an ellipse, its just another curved building is all I was trying to get across. But, point taken, I shouildn't mislead.

I do know that it is, "Michaelangelo" :)

As an apologia for Michelangelo's dome at St Peter's: the way we view it today is not at all how it was intended to be viewed or even as it was designed by Michelangelo. Namely, "New" St Peter's was originally intended to be a central-plan building, with the plan initially designed by Bramante and later refined (streamlined, one could say) by Michelangelo. If the central plan design had been kept, then when viewed from the front, the dome would have had a better visual relationship to the building than it does today. In the 17th century, Carlo Maderno (under orders from Pope Paul V Borghese) transformed the central plan to a longitudinal plan. But the dome had already been constructed by that point, so the result is when viewed from the front, the lengthened nave obscures the lower portion of the dome. To get a better sense of how Michelangelo intended the dome to relate visually to the building, you have to look at the building from the back. You can get a couple of views from windows in the Vatican Museums (I remember this but can't at all remember where in the Museums I was). Moreover, Michelangelo died before the dome was completed; the architect who finished the dome, Giacomo della Porta, raised the silhouette of the dome and made it ogival in shape. Michelangelo, although he had initially designed the dome to be ogival, later changed it to a hemispherical design.

So, in essence, Michelangelo would likely be very disappointed with the final result of New St Peter's and how "his" dome turned out.

While I did know the history of St.Peter's Dome, I had forgotten a good bit of it. Thanks DejaVu for the refresher. Yeah, isn't it a shame how the building, both in the Duomo and St.Peters, tends to detract from the dome itself? The Pantheon's the one that got that part right.

There are none so blind as those who will not see....a few of the artists, sculptors and architects of the Renaissance, especially Michelangelo, possessed some the greatest talent ever lent to this often ho-hum planet.

Celebrate it and don't listen to dime a dozen art critics!

Honestly, it makes me smile to see the relative merits of these creative geniuses debated on Fodors travel forum .

"So, in essence, Michelangelo would likely be very disappointed with the final result of New St Peter's and how "his" dome turned out. "

"Yeah, isn't it a shame how the building, both in the Duomo and St.Peters, tends to detract from the dome itself? The Pantheon's the one that got that part right."

If the Pieta doesn't bring you to tears you don't understand the man. Try and do 1,000,000th of what Michelangelo accomplished in his lifetime. His work makes me proud to be human.

Site below has some good info on Palladio's Italian Villas:

http://www.boglewood.com/palladio/analysis.html

Kakalena, You are missing the point entirely. No one said the slightest word to indicate that they doubted Michelangelo's genius.

What they were pointing out -- as have many scholars of art history, who might know a little more about Michelangelo than you do -- is that the decision, after Michelangelo's death, to change the central-plan design for which Michelangelo designed the dome to a longitudinal-plan design resulted in a subversion of Michelangelo's design that reduced its
effectiveness.

That statement does not question Michelangelo's genius, and you need not storm barricades that are not there.

For even more detail on Palladio's buildings in the Veneto (including opening times), see

http://www.cisapalladio.org/veneto/i...?lingua=e&

Hi Eloise,

Thanks for the comment. I got the point and I'm not trying to storm barricades.

My point is this...the title of the thread is "Best Medieval and Renaissance Architecture in Italy". Say that a student enters that very phrase into the search engine someday before a trip to Italy and looks at this thread to see some of the opinions posted here. They might skip seeing some of the greatest wonders of the world because they have been disparaged as being flawed. Can you understand that point?

I'll only mention this because you brought it up but you don't know my background.

I don't mean to offend, honestly. I'm trying to help.

I'll go away now.

Kakalena, I see your point, of course, but I doubt that any student would be discouraged by comments on a travel forum from visiting the Duomo in Florence or St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which are universally recognized for their role in the history of art and architecture.

topping

"...disparaged as being flawed"?
The way I read it, there were comments being made about whether or not certain buildings were true to their original designs--if they had been built according to original plan, they might indeed be even more magnificent than they are today.

Anyway, I was wondering who the architect was for the Siena Duomo, another of my favorite buildings.

Some scholars say that the architect of the Duomo in Siena was Nicola Pisano, known chiefly as a sculptor; he did, in any case, do a pulpit for the cathedral.

The present cathedral was originally intended only as the transept of a much, much larger building that never got built.

What a strange twist this post has taken - anybody else want recommend some other wonderful areas/sights? Let's move forward in a positve way.

Kakalena, You missed my point completely. If you reread my post, you will see I am suggesting that Michelangelo's original design is superior to how the building was actually built. Nowhere did I disparage Michelangelo or suggest the building is not worth visiting. I should think folks visiting St Peter's would like to know more about the history in order to better appreciate the building. The changes to the plan I mentioned actually have a whole subtext related to the Council of Trent, Catholic Counter-Reformation, etc. which are quite interesting. But I'll save that for my art history students. :-)

I'm not alone in saying that the design of New St Peter's doesn't "work" as well as it could, as Eloise has pointed out. And no, that doesn't stop anybody from going to see it. Including me. And I wasn't struck down by lightning when I went either. ;-)

And that's all I have to say about that. Moving on...

To actually answer the question now...a late medieval building I really like in Rome that hasn't been mentioned yet is the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, near the Pantheon. The interior was pretty heavily restored in the 19th c, but it's still a nice space. St Catherine's body is here, in a sarcophagus at the altar (her head is in Siena), and Fra Angelico is buried here too.

I also like the church of San Clemente, not far from the Colosseum, because you can go down and see the earlier layers underneath the current church...all the way down to an ancient Mithraeum! Very cool!

The Church of San Clemente is an interesting place.