As we prepare for our trip to Milan, looking up all of the tourist websites and reviewing the blogs of world travelers, everyone points to one spot as the number one tourist destination for Milan: il Duomo. Funny I thought it would be the Armani factory outlet. What the hell, half of my shirts are Formula One race T-shirts. So much for my fashion statement!

So it’s Thursday and we are going to head over to check it all out.  We hop on the #12 trolley from our hotel, and 15 minutes later we stop to hop off a block away from il Duomo. We take a few steps, turn the corner and there it is, il Duomo! OMG!   Look at all the people here, there’s got to be 10 or 15,000 people out here. And everybody just taking selfie’s with il Duomo in the background. Reminiscent of everyone taking pics and selfies of Mona Lisa in the Louvre back in 2016. The rest are just milling about, either heading to or just coming from il Duomo. We take a couple selfie’s ourselves, stop at the Vittorio Emmanuelle II statue. He's the first King of Italy, back in only 1861. And then we head over to buy tour tickets. A word of advice, by the full package that includes both the Duomo, the Duomo museum, and the underground museum.

I’m not Catholic, so I really don’t know much about cathedrals such as il Duomo, or Notre Dame, or Sacré Coeur, but one thing I do know, is incredible dedication to workmanship and craftsmanship. Unlike any other Cathedral and I have ever seen, including those mentioned above, the exterior is absolutely filled with tens if not hundreds of thousands of human sculptures, small and large. They seem to cover a full spectrum of humanity, people crouched in suffering positions, people stretched in elation, praying, eating, and even beheading. Yikes! Some as small as maybe 12 inches, all the way up to full size and then some. And this is carried all the way up to, what I would estimate to be somewhere in the range of 70 feet high in the main area, up to 100 feet or so towards the back of the cathedral. And that’s just on the wall, as I look up, I see spires at the top of the building with statues on top of the spires. Wow, that is trippy.  Thank about it, I mean these life-size statues on top of spires, the support that is needed to maintain that at the top of a building with winds gusting about, how these things simply do not blow off the top must be absolute divine intervention. And then as if that weren’t intricate and detailed enough, when we come back downstairs I noticed the front doors. Each door which stand some 15 feet high and probably 8 feet wide, inlay carved with thousands of bronze figurines depicting scenes from the Bible. This is absolutely fascinating.

il Duomo, incredibly, was finished in 1965. Wait...1965? Well when did it begin? How about 1386. Wait..wha...are you kidding me? That's like 500...and something...carry the 7, 579 years in the making. Yes, the final gate was finished in 1965, and there are actually some statues still under construction! Whoa, some people just need to know when to quit.

The interior is like any other large Cathedral.  Full of sexpartite vaulted buttresses, massive columns for support and benches for praying. We walk through and admire it all and say a prayer. We head downstairs to see the underground museum, and then head up the steps to tour the rooftop. Rooftop? Yes the rooftop! What cathedral has tours of the roof top? il Duomo! When you’re the largest Cathedral in Italy, and #5 in the world, you can do whatever you want. The rooftop is just as fascinating as the steps to get up to it are not something a vertical sufferer would want to deal with. But it allows you to see architecture that extends literally to the heavens. Why would anybody even build this atop of the cathedral? Literally, only Heaven knows. Narrow walk ways, in marble which is very slippery in the rain, and even more narrow stairways allow you to see the rooftop guardians up close and the view over Milan is incredible.

Once you see these statues, above the city, something immediately comes to mind. Has it? Wait for it...think...The Dark Knight...Batman...comics in general. It is scary, seeing these statues in person, you see exactly where the idea for these comics came from. The Saviors. The Guardians. The Watchers. They're all here, standing 100 feet above the city, watching over the citizens below.

The visit is exquisite, mesmerizing and even transforming. Seeing this in person makes you believe so much more, in the human spirit. What man is able to imagine, he can create. Ironically, for this Formula 1 weekend, is the Formula 1 of churches. Thank you, for this, I am eternally grateful to Milan. Grazie e arrivederla!