Florence Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink, bordered by white, and has an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival façade by Emilio De Fabris.
Brunelleschi's Dome, the nave, and Giotto's Campanile of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore as seen from Michelangelo Hill
The Duomo viewed from the heights of Piazzale Michelangelo
The Duomo, as if completed, in a fresco by Andrea di Bonaiuto, painted in the 1360s, before the commencement of the dome
Donatello first version of David (1408–09). Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Height 191 cm.
A cathedral is a church that contains the cathedra of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures, and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches, and episcopal residences. The cathedral is more important in the hierarchy than the church because it is from the cathedral that the bishop governs the area under his or her administrative authority.
São Paulo Cathedral in Brazil is a representative modern cathedral built in Neo-Gothic style.
The cathedra of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran
Etchmiadzin cathedral in Vagarshapat, Armenia, believed to be the oldest cathedral in the world.
The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta is a Catholic cathedral in Nepi, Italy