The Duomo of Milan ★★★

The Cathedral of Milan is one of the largest Gothic churches in the world, an intricate festival of soaring spires and statuary

The Duomo of Milan. (Photo by Jakub Hałun) The world's largest Gothic cathedral took almost 430 years to complete, from its 1386 inception under Gian Galeazzo Visconti to the facade's finishing touches in 1813 under Napoléon.

To this day, in Milan, when people want to describe something that seems to be taking forever they say "é come la fabbrica del Duomo" ("it's like the building of the cathedral").

Even in sheer figures the Duomo is impressive: at 158 by 93 meters it's the third largest church in the world (just behind Rome's St. Peter's), and is supported by 52 massive columns inside. It's an urban forest of stone pinnacles, flying buttresses, and more than 3,500 statues outside and in.

My favorite of the sculptures in the shadowy interior is up by the right transept entrance: St. Bartholomew Flayed. Marco d'Agrate carved this gruesome but fascinating tour de force of anatomy in 1562. The skinned saint, a mass of muscle tissue and exposed veins, has his flayed skin thrown rather jauntily over one shoulder.

(D'Agrate thought pretty highly of himself: the Latin inscription at the base of the statue boats "No, Praxiteles didn't carve me, Marcus d'Agrate did."—Praxiteles was the greatest sculptor in ancient Greece.)

Best part: Visitors can wander about the forest of Gothic carving that decorates the rooftop of Milan's cathedral. Climb the narrow stairs, duck through the Gothic tracery of those buttresses, skirt along the eaves, and clamber up onto the peaked roof of the nave to drink in a panorama across the city that, on the rare clear morning, can stretch all the way to the Alps.

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