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When I went to college I minored in art history, but I have forgotten most things! Recently I have been relearning about it, specifically the Renaissance period.

Something interesting that I learned (or maybe relearned I don't remember) is about the Florence Cathedral (il Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore; by it's other names). The city states of Italy were always outdoing each other by building bigger and bigger Cathedrals, so Florence in about the 1290s designed and started building the biggest Cathedral ever, still the biggest today! By being the biggest Cathedral, it would have the biggest dome ever built, but they had a big problem... they didn't know how to build it. They had a while to figure out this problem since the construction would take about 100 years.

The Cathedral was in its final phases and there was still no solution to the dome in sight, but one day a goldsmith, with no prior architecture experience, claimed he had the solution to the problem. His name was Filippo Brunelleschi. The people of Florence had many doubts, but Brunelleschi had a brilliant mind, he constructed this freestanding dome!

The funny part about all this? We still don't really know how he did it, he left behind no drawings or plans; he was a very secretive man. Many people say this should of been impossible with the technology they had available in those days.