Giotto's Campanile rises beside Florence Cathedral

1334

The aging master began his tower of white, green, and pink marble beside the unfinished Duomo, designing a structure of sublime geometric proportion. He designed all six stories but lived to see only the first completed. The campanile - geometric, luminous, sheathed in sculpted hexagons depicting human arts and labors - became Florence's vertical signature and a monument to the city's civic pride.