The largest dome in the world was built in the first half of the 15th century. More than 140 feet in diameter, the dome of the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore has stood watch over Florence, Italy, for the past 500 years. In Brunelleschi's Dome, Ross King tells the story of not the original architect of the structure, but the man who won the competition to actually complete the daunting design. Using techniques never before imagined, Filoppo Brunelleschi spent thirty years to raise more than seventy million pounds of stone hundreds of feet into the air -- all while dodging a near continuous onslaught of obstacles such as war, bad weather, and sniping from his lifelong rival, Lorenzo Ghilberti.

Harold Check