Santa Maria del Fiore (aka Florence Duomo) is steeped in history spanning 1600 years!
February 28th 2009 One can't help feeling humbled and quite frankly, dwarfed as you stand beside Florence's Duomo with Brunelleschi's dome rising boldly to the heavens or next to Giotto's campanile standing alongside since 1333. Imagine for a moment, what life was like before the Duomo when an ancient Christian basilica stood on these grounds in the late 4th century when this colony of Rome, known as Florentia, was
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Italy became a nation-state in 1861 when the city-states of the peninsula, along with Sardinia and Sicily, were united under King Victor EMMANUEL II. An era of parliamentary government came to a close in the early 1920s when Benito MUSSOLINI establis... ... read more 
