Florence, restoration workshop opens free for a day, 726 years since the founding of the Opera del Duomo

On September 8, 726 years ago in 1296, theOpera di Santa Maria del Fiore was founded, and this day will be celebrated with thefree opening of the Restoration Workshop to the public. Thus, on Thursday, September 8, 2022, visitors will have the opportunity to enter without a reservation, from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. nonstop, the space on Via dello Studio in Florence. Restorers from the Opera will welcome the public and talk about the history of the institution and the activities that take place here.

The Bottega is reminiscent of the ancient artisan workshops, and visitors will be able to admire the handmade copies made by restorers/chiselers of the statues of Pope Celestine I, Pope Gregory VII and Pope Leo the Great that will replace the originals (currently under restoration and in the future musealized) on the 19th-century facade of the Duomo.

The Restoration Workshop is more than seven hundred years old. Its first location was in a room behind the apse of the Cathedral. It was later moved to an adjacent building, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, which was the former headquarters of the Opera (where the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo is now located). In the eighteenth century, the Bottega was moved to another location, called “the rotunda,” still located in Piazza delle Pallottole. The last and final move took place around the middle of the 19th century, to Via dello Studio, where the Restoration Workshop is still located today.

The main purpose of the Restoration Workshop was to carry out the sculptural and architectural decoration of the Cathedral and Bell Tower. The workers of the Bottega were stonemasons. Over the centuries and particularly since the 20th century, alongside this traditional work, that of the restoration of the entire decorative and architectural part of the Cathedral and its monuments has increased. Most of the sculptures that adorned the Cathedral and Giotto ’s Bell Tower have over time, for conservation reasons, been musealized and in their place placed copies made to perfection by the stonemasons of the Restoration Workshop.

Pictured is the Restoration Workshop of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore © Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. Photo by Ambra Nepi

Florence, restoration workshop opens free for a day, 726 years since the founding of the Opera del Duomo

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