imagine this it's 1418 in Florence Italy you've been challenged to build a great dome for the Santa Maria Del Fior one of the grandest cathedrals ever built and you have no formal architectural training no pressure right for filipo Brun aleski a Goldsmith and clock maker it was the opportunity of a lifetime he considered the challenge carefully [Music] then proposed a daring plan using methods that experts don't fully understand even to this day at the time domes were often built as semi circles but the town fathers required that brunesci build an eight-sided Dome that would be
even taller and stronger it would also have no Central support system to hold it up during construction even worse the D's base was an imprecise octagon with no true Center but brunelli had that covered there would be two domes instead of one an inner and an outer shell held together by giant brick arches and interlocking rings of stone and wood the Rings would work like Hoops on a barrel keeping the Dome from expanding outward to move heavy loads hundreds of feet up brunoli designed ingenious new machines including an ox driven hoist and massive lifting devices
far ahead of their time so revolutionary design check groundbreaking engineering check can do attitude check but with no Central support system how would he actually build it first off the masonry would have to support itself during construction to do this brunes placed the bricks in a airing born pattern which spiraled to the top of the Dome with vertical bricks acting as bookins to hold the others in place they laid about one row a week giving the mortar time to cure at this rate the DOR grew at a snail's pace of about a foot a month
but perhaps most puzzling is how he was able to place the bricks with such Precision hey many experts agre that he used guide ropes one theory states that ropes ran from a flower pattern on the work platform that showed exactly where the bricks should go another has ropes running from the dome's center tracing a series of cones That Grew smaller as they ascended to the top still another suggests a different arrangement of central ropes and wooden templates however it was done it worked the eight faces of the Dome met at the top precisely just as
breski had planned in all it took 16 years to complete the Dome when he died in 1446 Brun aleski Left Behind no sketches and no details as to exactly how he achieved his Masterpiece today it Remains the largest masonry dome in the world more than 500 years after it was built for [Music]
