NARRATOR: It is one of the greatest engineering feats of all time.
A miracle made of brick and mortar that defied the doubters
and helped inspire the Renaissance--
the dome of the Florence cathedral,
built 600 years ago by a goldsmith
with no training as an architect
who dared to attempt the impossible.
He constructs the dome at a time
where the technology should not have permitted it.
It just should not have been possible.
NARRATOR: Constructed of over four million bricks
weighing 40,000 tons,
it's the largest masonry dome the world has ever known.
Yet the methods used to build it remain a mystery.
Now, a professor obsessed with the dome's secrets
joins forces with a team
of American bricklayers to put his theory to the test.
(speaking Italian)
MAN: I had to figure it out myself because the builder did
not write anything down and did not leave anything behind.
MAN: This must be the way they would have done it,
this would be the only way that it would make sense.
NARRATOR: "Great Cathedral Mystery"
right now on this NOVA/National Geographic Special.
Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following:
Supporting NOVA and promoting public understanding of science.
And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
And by:
Additional funding from:
NARRATOR: Florence, Italy.
For centuries, travelers have been coming here
to gaze at the wonders of the Renaissance.
600 years ago,
this city experienced a creative explosion unlike any other.
Visionaries like Leonardo da Vinci
and Michelangelo flourished here
in an atmosphere that celebrated imagination and innovation.
Many believe the Renaissance began
with the completion of the city's most visible landmark--
the dome on the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Built 60 years before Columbus sailed the Atlantic,
without the use of modern machines or materials,
the dome is still the largest of its kind in the world.
It's an icon shrouded in mystery
because no one knows exactly how it was constructed.
Certain features of the dome stand out.
It's in the shape of a pointed arch
with eight sides rising to a central point,
topped by an enormous marble lantern.
But there is more to it than meets the eye.
The exterior tiles conceal walls
containing over four million bricks.
And what appears to be a single, solid structure
is actually two domes, one inside the other.
The interior dome covers an open space
nearly half the length of a football field,
while the outer shell rises ten stories atop cathedral walls,
themselves 170 feet high.
Questions about how the dome was built
persist to this day.
Six centuries ago, how could builders work
at such great heights?
How could they know the eight sides would meet in the center?
And how did the steep brick walls
hold together without collapsing?
With the dome, Florence moves
into an entirely different dimension.
The dome becomes the hub of a new city, of a new world.
This is so soaring, so daring, so confident,
so absolute a structure.
It's like a work of God.
NARRATOR: But the dome is the work of a man,
one of the most elusive and enigmatic geniuses of all time.
His name was Filippo Brunelleschi.
Trained as a goldsmith, he had no experience in architecture
or building, yet he took on what seemed to be impossible,
keeping 40,000 tons of masonry curving through the air
without caving in to the floor below.
Experts are still trying to understand
how he managed to defy gravity.
ROCKY RUGGIERO: He constructs the dome at a time
where the technology should not have permitted it.
How is it possible that he built the thing when he did?
It just should not have been possible.
NARRATOR: By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi
was a suspicious and secretive man.
Unlike Leonardo, he left behind no notebooks, no drawings,
no blueprints for later generations to study.
So, for centuries, scholars have been trying
to uncover the secret of Brunelleschi's dome.
Brunelleschi is so revered in Florence
they hold a parade every year on the anniversary of his death.
The destination--
his tomb within the great cathedral itself.
Leading the ceremony is Massimo Ricci,
professor of architecture and engineering
at the University of Florence.
Ricci has spent 40 years of his life
trying to understand the master's methods.
For Ricci, Brunelleschi has become an obsession.
RICCI (translated): The study of the dome is so difficult and so daunting
because it forces you to deal with the mind that created it.
It's a direct relationship
with a way of thinking that existed outside the norm.
And that engagement inspires a kind of fear,
but at the same time, a great respect for him
that is beyond measure.
NARRATOR: The mystery of the dome has taken such a hold on him
that for nearly 25 years, Ricci's been building a dome
of his own in a park in a residential neighborhood
in Florence-- employing what he believes
to be Brunelleschi's methods.
He began construction in 1989.
Since then, the model has served as an open-air laboratory,
with Ricci playing the role of Brunelleschi
and crews of architecture students putting his ideas
into effect.
Ricci insists his approach is the only way
to answer questions that have mystified scholars
since the Renaissance.
(speaking Italian)
(translated): I was the only one who felt the need
to build a model on such a grand scale,
to understand more deeply all the secrets hidden
within the dome.
NARRATOR: Now Ricci's experiment is at a crucial point in the process.
With over 400 tons of masonry in place,
the walls are beginning to bend inward.
The pull of gravity is unrelenting,
and the danger of collapse is very real.
Soon, it could be too risky for students to continue the work.
To understand the dome, you have to go
through the problems of the bricklayers.
Whoever doesn't do this
is going to make a big fool of themselves.
(speaking Italian)
Basta!
NARRATOR: In the Renaissance, there were no lasers,
computer-animated models or detailed blueprints
to guide the process.
Builders relied on ropes to control the progress
of the work.
Ricci is convinced that the secret to the dome
has something to do with a special way
Brunelleschi used rope lines to establish
how each brick should fit into place.
WOMAN: Non, troppa, troppa, troppa.
NARRATOR: Ricci's dome is one-fifth the size of Brunelleschi's,
but still huge.
Large enough, he hopes,
to prove his theory of the secret of the dome correct.
RUGGIERO: I think oftentimes when you have an artist
whose personality remains
as vague as Brunelleschi's, inevitably what scholars do
is to almost assume the role of the artist.
What you're trying to do is to put yourself
into the mind of the architect.
Trying to find the secret of the dome is trying to find
the secret of Brunelleschi.
NARRATOR: The search for that secret begins
in the years just before the Renaissance.
At the dawn of the 14th century, a kind of medieval arms race
is raging between Florence and other emerging city-states
like Siena and Pisa, each trying to outdo the other
by building bigger and bigger cathedrals.
Florentines are very creative people.
They are also very competitive people.
That means, among other things,
they want to do what no one else has done.
And they decided that other cities i i iTuscany,
other cities in Italy had grander temples than they did,
and so they wanted to compete with them and, more especially,
they wanted to outdo them.
NARRATOR: In 1293, the city leaders of Florence form a committee
to oversee the construction of a new cathedral.
They want theirs to be different from any other.
Florentines dislike the look of the Gothic cathedrals
that have been spreading across Europe for over a hundred years.
They consider them too cluttered,
with their walls propped up by flying buttresses
and their many tall, pointed spires.
For inspiration, the committee looks to ancient Rome--
in particular, to the classical temple
honoring all Roman gods, the Pantheon.
It was famed for its unrivaled dome made of poured concrete.
But such engineering technology had been completely erased
by centuries of war.
And it's the accepted wisdom of the time that no culture
will ever rival the Romans in the building arts.
Florence is determined to surpass
all architectural glories, past and present.
Through the 1300s, the cathedral committee's vision
for Santa Maria del Fiore keeps expanding.
Longer, wider, higher.
Eventually, the committee's reach begins
to exceed its grasp.
They were really presenting themselves
with a serious problem, because in enlarging the church,
what they're also enlarging
is the crossing area of the church,
essentially where the two arms would intersect.
NARRATOR: Like many cathedrals, Santa Maria del Fiore
is in the shape of a cross.
The larger the church, the larger the area
over the altar place needed to be covered by the dome.
RUGGIERO: They eventually create a crossing space
which measured 143 feet, six inches across.
Today, in the 21st century,
it would be difficult for us to cover, to roof,
such a vast space.
In the 14th and 15th centuries,
theoretically it should have been impossible.
NARRATOR: A mural depicting the cathedral years before the dome was begun
shows what the committee had in mind:
an enormous pointed dome with eight sides meeting at the top.
KING: There's no question it's going to be spectacular.
There is just one catch:
No one knows how they are going to build it.
NARRATOR: What was so challenging about building a dome
on this cathedral?
After all, a dome is nothing more than an arch
rotated 360 degrees.
And by 1300,
Gothic cathedrals had been using arches
and vaulting for over a hundred years.
How did they do it?
Medieval technology relies on wooden frameworks
to hold the masonry until the final piece
is put in place.
The two sides pushing against each other
allow the structure to stand on its own.
This method is known as "centering."
In the Middle Ages, if we're building a vault,
we build that wooden framework.
We put our blocks, our bricks on top of it,
we wait for the masonry to dry,
then we make the sign of the cross,
pull the wooden framework away and run like hell,
because the failure rate on most of these vaults was about 50%.
NARRATOR: But this technology would not work in the Florence cathedral.
The problem with the wooden centering
for Santa Maria del Fiore
was that it was going to be unprecedented
in scale if they built it.
It would have been enormously expensive.
NARRATOR: The area beneath the dome is so high and so wide,
just building the wooden framework to support the masonry
would have taken hundreds of trees, years of construction
and huge amounts of money.
Unless someone, someday, invents a way
to keep curving walls in place as they rise,
the dome will never be built.
I mean, for me, the most extraordinary thing
about the construction of the cathedral
is undertaking a project that you knew fully well
you did not have the technology to complete.
NARRATOR: By the time Filippo Brunelleschi is born,
the cathedral has already been under construction
for 80 years, with no solution in sight
to the problem of the dome.
Brunelleschi spends his youth
being trained not as an architect or stone mason,
but in a trade that continues to flourish
in Florence to this day:
precious metals.
It's a path followed in later years by many artists,
including Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci.
(translated): He began in the workshop
when he was 14 years old,
his father's friend's workshop.
He apprenticed until he was 17 or 18
and he learned all the techniques
typical of the Florentine tradition.
To us in the 21st century, that may seem a slightly odd way
to get your start in architecture.
But in fact, you could have had no better training
in the 15th century to become an architect
or a sculptor or a designer of any sort.
They worked with gold, they worked with silver.
They used their minds as well as their hands.
They had to figure out how to make things work
both practically and also aesthetically.
NARRATOR: Brunelleschi first attracts public attention
in the year 1401.
Just 23, he enters a competition
to decorate the most revered building
in all of Florence, the Baptistery.
For centuries, Florentines, including Dante and the Medicis,
have been baptized here.
And the building needs a new set of ornamented bronze doors.
And Filippo Brunelleschi,
being very ambitious and very talented,
threw his hat into the ring.
It's the most important artistic competition for a public work
that everyone will see,
that will immediately create fame and prestige,
and he manages to become one of the finalists,
along with another beginning master, Lorenzo Ghiberti.
The competition involved casting a trial panel,
making an experimental piece to show what you could do.
So everyone was given the same amount of bronze and told,
"Go away to your workshop and make us something."
They produced two panels, which luckily still survive.
In these two panels, there's a confrontation
between the classical style of Ghiberti
and the Renaissance of Brunelleschi.
(continuing in Italian)
The Abraham of Lorenzo Ghiberti is very beautiful.
He has a long, curly beard, flowing hair.
The scene is very decorated.
It's very rich in detail.
The one from Brunelleschi is one of incredible humanism.
That's already something new.
Look at the way in which Abraham wants to kill his son.
While the Abraham of Ghiberti is just in his pose
with the knife, and the son is there casually--
almost like he's ready to be stabbed--
in the one by Brunelleschi,
he's taken his son by the throat and you can see
that he has placed his hand where the blood is flowing,
because he wanted to stun the child
because he didn't want the son to feel the pain
when he stabbed him with the knife.
This is the creation of an incredible genius.
Above all, it defines Brunelleschi as an artist.
That is the difference this brought
to the art of 1400 in the Renaissance.
This is the Renaissance.
NARRATOR: Both panels are masterpieces, but Brunelleschi's vision
may have been too far ahead of its time.
The commission goes to Lorenzo Ghiberti.
Losing the commission to Lorenzo Ghiberti,
I think there's no question, hurt Brunelleschi very badly
and in many ways shaped his career
and the way that he proceeded after that.
Brunelleschi may or may not have understood why he lost,
but certainly, from that point,
Filippo Brunelleschi must feel
that he has to carve out a new niche for himself.
NARRATOR: Following the competition,
the disappointed Brunelleschi leaves Florence.
Little is known about his life for the next 15 years,
but it's clear he spends time in Rome
studying the ancient monuments.
Some believe he's already preparing himself
for a future challenge--
building the dome on the Florence cathedral.
Here in the nearby park, Massimo Ricci's dome
is at a critical point.
He and his helpers are preparing for its biggest test yet.
With the walls increasing in height, Ricci is concerned
about having his students continue the work.
So a new team has arrived in town
to help push Ricci's experiment forward.
RICCI: Good morning.
NARRATOR: They are all master bricklayers from the United States.
Nice to meet you, sir.
Dave Wysocki.
Don Hunt, nice to meet you.
I think we're starting here.
NARRATOR: They're members of the International Masonry Institute,
an organization that trains workers
in the craft of bricklaying.
MAN: Quarter-inch.
Half-inch.
However many millimeters that is.
No inches here.
Millimeters.
Yeah, sorry.
NARRATOR: Each one has more than 20 years on the job.
Not in Florence for the food or the works of art,
they are here to lay some brick.
MAN: There you go, perfect.
NARRATOR: The bricklayers understand the basic structure
of Brunelleschi's plan.
The eight corners of the dome-- where the walls meet--
act like the ribs of the dome.
Once these corner ribs meet at the top,
they form powerful arches.
Together with smaller interior arches, this goes a long way
toward holding the 40,000-ton mass together.
Basically it's a series of four Gothic arches.
Arches that come up this way.
So if you see this rib here,
the opposite one there is going to come up, you know,
like that, so you've got a series of four Gothic arches
that all should meet in the middle.
That's the key.
NARRATOR: Working on the model, the Americans will be confronting
the key mystery of the dome:
until the curving walls connect at the top,
what keeps them from falling to the ground?
And what magic did Brunelleschi use to defy gravity?
JONAS ELMORE: You know, I've built a lot of things from stadiums,
baseball, football, but I've never, ever worked
on something like this.
We use different mechanisms to hold arches in place.
Then once we are done, we take them out.
But this is freestanding,
which I have never, ever seen construction like this before.
NARRATOR: Their first task will be to literally learn the ropes
and begin to understand Ricci's theory.
They are very okay.
NARRATOR: By 1418, more than 100 years after work had begun,
the enormous cathedral is almost complete.
It's bigger than any other in the world.
But without a dome, it is in danger of becoming
the world's largest joke.
It's clear the people of the city were worried
about this problem.
All the Florentines were talking about it.
They knew very well that they risked looking bad
in front of their rivals.
KING: They realized that building has got to the point
where they cannot put off any longer how they're going
to build this.
And so they put forth a competition saying
that whoever has any ideas
about how on earth we can do this, we're open.
It's sort of "answers on a postcard, please."
RICCI (translated): They didn't have any idea what they were going to do.
(speaking Italian)
NARRATOR: Proposals for the dome come pouring into the committee.
But they all share a fatal flaw.
They depend on using wooden framework to keep the bricks
in place during construction.
Only one candidate promises to build a freestanding,
self-sustaining dome-- Filippo Brunelleschi.
He tells the committee he's figured out a way
for the dome to stand on its own,
even as it is curving inward.
The financial advantage of that must have been extraordinary,
but the skepticism was probably even greater
in the sense that, how could that be possible,
what will prevent that structure from simply sliding out
and caving in as we're building it?
NARRATOR: But there is a problem.
The 41-year-old Brunelleschi has never built anything.
RUGGIERO: When they get to that final piece, this is really
the climax of the entire two-century construction history
of the church.
Who is this man working in jewelry who now steps forward
and says, "Look, I have the credentials,
"I have the know-how, I have the inspiration,
to actually design this structure."
And would you have trusted him?
I mean, I would not have.
NARRATOR: Perhaps Brunelleschi's supreme self-confidence
impresses the committee, because he clearly
does not have all of the problems worked out in advance.
I think that Brunelleschi had a very clear idea
of how to build that dome, but realized
that there were certain construction details
that he could only figure out as the work was in progress.
Filippo, being extremely secretive
and not wanting anyone else to know his plan,
said, "I'll show you how to do it when you give me the job.
"Give me the job and I'll begin doing it
and you'll see that it works."
Everyone else had shown his plan.
Brunelleschi refused.
He said, "I know how to build it,
"only I know how to build it.
"I've studied the ancient Roman structures.
I already see it built."
And so they said, "Well, you have to tell us something."
So he said, "Bring me an egg."
And he said, "Anyone who can keep this egg standing upright
"on the marble tabletop
will understand how I'm going to build the dome."
KING: Imagine all of these eminent master masons
from all over Europe trying to get it
to stand upright on its own.
All of them fail.
So they give the egg to Brunelleschi and say,
"Show us what you mean."
And Vasari, who tells this story
in the 16th century, uses a very vulgar term.
He says...
(speaking Italian)
"Pippo," Filippo's nickname, "broke the egg's ass."
So he breaks the bottom of the egg and they say,
"Well, we could have done that too."
And Brunelleschi says, "Yes, and you would be able
to build the dome if you know what I know."
NARRATOR: Seventeen years earlier, his radical vision
may have cost him the competition
for the Baptistery doors.
This time, Brunelleschi keeps his idea secret
for as long as possible,
asking the committee to trust him.
Had he told the assembled company
his secret, it would have been
something that they wouldn't have understood.
A special brick pattern, a special kind of brick work
that he was going to use in the interior of the dome.
NARRATOR: In April 1420, the committee comes to a decision.
They choose Brunelleschi,
along with two others including his old rival,
Ghiberti, to build the dome.
If he ever was going to have a moment of doubt,
I think that would have been the one.
Because he would have seen up close and personal
the magnitude of the task that literally lay before him
at that point, because he would have looked
across this chasm, this yawning gap.
He must have, at some level, gulped and thought,
"Am I going to be able to do this?"
NARRATOR: Brunelleschi quickly emerges as the leader
and takes on his first challenge--
lifting the building materials 170 feet
to the work platform above.
Technologically, the means did not exist.
Up until Brunelleschi's time, lifting devices
were referred to generically as the rota magna,
or as the great wheel,
which was a large wooden wheel
that looked very much like a modern gerbil cage,
inside of which human beings would walk,
causing the wheel to turn,
and as that wheel turned, it would coil a rope,
and that coiling would gradually then lift an object
based on the lifting power of the people
who were actually walking inside.
NARRATOR: Brunelleschi realizes that the old method could not be used
in a project this large and a worksite this high.
He invents a hoist that uses oxen,
rather than people, to raise and lower the loads.
This is really Brunelleschi as the engineer and inventor.
They're turning a wheel that would turn a vertical shaft
and it in turn would have a series of cogged wheels
that would then interlock with other cogged wheels.
And so as the oxen are moving in one direction,
they could, of course, lift weight upward, okay?
But more importantly, Brunelleschi realized,
we're not going to have to only lift weights up,
we're going to have to lower those weights, as well.
And so he introduces
what is the first ever reverse gear in history.
NARRATOR: Keeping the oxen moving
in the same direction saves valuable time.
The hoist raises or lowers material
depending on which of two horizontal wheels locks
into a vertical wheel on the drum holding the rope.
When a load needs lifting, the bottom wheel engages,
and the drum gathers rope in.
When a load needs lowering, the top wheel is set in place
to turn the drum in the opposite direction.
By simply changing which of the wheels interlocked
with the larger vertical one,
you could then change the direction, technically,
of actually lifting or actually lowering of the material
down to the ground.
NARRATOR: The oxen could walk all day long in the same direction,
keeping materials flowing to and from the workplace above.
KING: In 3,000 years of engineering, no one had ever done that.
He pushed beyond a boundary that no one else had crossed.
No one else had even got to that boundary.
Brunelleschi crossed over it.
NARRATOR: Brunelleschi had solved the problem
of lifting nearly 40,000 tons of material up to the worksite.
Now, the former goldsmith has an even bigger challenge--
connecting eight massive walls together
to form the world's largest dome.
Florence holds its breath as the walls begin to rise.
Around 1425, five years into project,
the bricks, by design, start to curve inward.
Without a wooden framework to hold the weight,
the project is entering dangerous, uncharted territory.
The old methods of bricklaying would no longer work.
Most walls are built by simply laying bricks
along straight lines--
one after another, layer upon layer.
Russell Gentry, a professor of engineering at Georgia Tech,
has studied Brunelleschi's methods.
So if Brunelleschi had built the wall
in the simple way you see here, you would have layers
of brick and layers of mortar.
And the layers of brick and layer of mortar
are very simply separated by one another,
and the layers of mortar represent planes
of weakness through the wall.
What we see here is that the wall is leaning in,
gravity is pulling it in towards me.
And so a crack could form in one of the layers of mortar--
the mortar is weaker than the brick--
and the whole thing could rotate
and all of this brick could fall in.
NARRATOR: The time had come for Brunelleschi to share
part of his secret plan with the world.
That's the point in the building where support
of some sort was always needed.
And Brunelleschi had to begin using this special pattern
of laying bricks that he himself seems to have invented.
NARRATOR: In Brunelleschi's new design, horizontal bricks
are interrupted by others set vertically.
Instead of continuing in one straight line,
the bricks zigzag.
In the area between the two domes
that pattern is visible today,
but only in small patches that remain unplastered.
In Italian, the design is called
"spina pesce," spine of the fish.
English speakers call it "herringbone."
MAN: I think we're having spina pesce for dinner.
NARRATOR: The herringbone design is even easier to spot
in Massimo Ricci's dome.
The pattern is simple.
And it's a method the American bricklayers catch on to rapidly.
MAN: Okay, perfetto.
NARRATOR: They lay the vertical bricks first.
These are the spines.
Once the spines are set, the horizontal bricks
are then wedged in between the spines, row after row.
In all their years of working,
the Americans have never seen bricks laid quite this way.
It's completely different.
The techniques are definitely, definitely way different
than what we're used to.
This system is pretty amazing, really.
NARRATOR: The vertical bricks in the spina pesce pattern
block the mortar's planes of weakness.
This prevents large sections of wall
from separating-- or shearing-- and tumbling to the ground.
If everything was laid horizontally
and you just brought it in slowly each time,
you would always have a shear point, a shear plane
where that could slide off.
Where here, you don't have any single shear point anywhere.
It's all tied together a million times.
NARRATOR: The herringbone brick pattern
is so untested at the time, Brunelleschi has had to convince
the cathedral board and the workers to allow him to use it.
Once again, Brunelleschi is going against convention.
He's also asking his workers to trust him with their lives.
They were working around about 220, 230 feet in the air
and they were literally hanging over an empty space
where if they fell, it was certain death.
And so Brunelleschi certainly needed
to have his men have faith in him.
And they needed to believe
that Brunelleschi knew what he was doing.
NARRATOR: Brunelleschi must have done something
to convince the workers to trust this new method.
But what?
The answer may lie in a building
that sits just behind the cathedral
in the very shadow of the dome.
It was built as a theater in the 1800s.
Many years later, it was converted into a parking garage.
While renovations were going on to build a new wing
of the cathedral museum,
archaeologists dug out centuries of landfill
and discovered buried treasure.
What now appears to be a hole in the ground
would have been a freestanding structure in the 15th century:
the remains of a dome, perhaps left there
by Brunelleschi himself.
Professor Francesco Gurrieri of the University of Florence
is overseeing the discovery.
(Gurrieri speaking Italian)
(translated): Here it is.
This is the famous little dome.
It was discovered in November 2012
and it surprised the world of architecture.
NARRATOR: The top has been lost to time,
but the inward curve of the walls remains.
The little dome's base is constructed of sandstone.
The brickwork only begins a third of the way up the wall.
This proportion mirrors exactly the design
of the cathedral dome.
And the brickwork is done in a herringbone pattern.
GURRIERI (translated): I was immediately excited about it,
because having recognized the presence of the herringbone,
I immediately connected it to Brunelleschi's technique.
KING: And do you think Brunelleschi stood here
and said, "This is how I'm going to do it.
This is the secret to building the dome"?
GURRIERI (translated): Yes, it's very probable that during the construction,
Brunelleschi was here to demonstrate the use
of the herringbone method.
(in English): Yes, I think this is the model.
NARRATOR: But the new discovery features one obvious difference:
It's round, while the cathedral dome appears
to have eight individual walls.
But appearances can be deceiving.
Brunelleschi uses the spina pesce pattern
to create a dome that looks like an octagon,
but is actually one continuous spiral.
So we're here looking at the corner of Massimo's dome
and what we can see behind the corner is we see the start
of the bedding of the masonry, and as we go up,
we can see the bricks in the spina pesce pattern.
And if you watch carefully, you can see that they start here
and they wrap up around, behind the corner,
and continue uninterrupted from one face of the dome
to the other face of the dome.
NARRATOR: By simply turning some bricks on their sides,
Brunelleschi establishes a new pattern
and achieves two important goals:
preventing cracks from spreading
and binding the eight walls into one unified mass.
The spiral form resists the forces of gravity
more effectively than an eight-sided dome.
For many, spina pesce is the secret of the dome.
But the construction of the dome involved many secrets,
something the American bricklayers have come
to understand from their time with Massimo Ricci.
MAN: Look at that, that's one piece!
NARRATOR: After two weeks on the job,
they're ready to compare their work to the real thing.
The interior dome is completely covered by a religious mural.
MAN: Wow!
NARRATOR: The area between the shells offers only glimpses
of key elements.
This is a corner rib.
See that?
MAN: Yes.
That would be an interior rib.
NARRATOR: And plaster conceals all but a few patches of brickwork.
You can still see, here's a good illustration of spina pesce.
Oh, man.
This is unbelievable.
This is scary looking, isn't it?
It really is.
We can't be complaining about anything
over our little one-fifth scale
about ten feet off the ground anymore, okay?
NARRATOR: On the way down, the workers notice something
that escapes all but the most experienced eye.
You see this, guys?
See how this is coming up to the center just like on the model?
See that?
Both of these, that's the horizontal arch right there.
NARRATOR: The bricks are sloping
down from the corner ribs toward the centers of the walls.
The massive scale of the dome makes it difficult to see.
But the Americans recognize its significance from Massimo Ricci.
The important feature barely visible in Brunelleschi's dome
becomes clear in Ricci's model.
The tops of the walls don't follow a straight line
as they go up.
They dip from corner to corner.
Within each wall, this creates an inverted arch,
one of the most stable forms in architecture.
These arches, combined with the spina pesce pattern,
keep the bricks firmly in place,
directing the weight of the masonry downward
through the walls, preventing them from collapsing inward.
It's an ingenious design,
and Ricci struggled for years to figure out how Brunelleschi
made it work, and how he insured that the walls all met
perfectly at the top, nearly 300 feet above the ground.
Ricci was sure the answer lay
in one of the primary building technologies of the time--
rope lines, which Renaissance builders used
to guide their work.
If Ricci could figure out how Brunelleschi set up his ropes,
he could unveil one of the dome's most overlooked secrets.
He knew the guide ropes must have been attached
to a large platform built into the base of the dome.
But in what pattern?
I had to figure it out myself
because Brunelleschi didn't write anything down
and he didn't leave anything behind.
NARRATOR: Ricci sketched out hundreds of possible designs
trying to unlock Brunelleschi's secret.
Then he heard about a 600-year-old document
stored in the Florentine State Archives.
It's a drawing done on parchment, about five years
after work on the dome began.
It's the only surviving eyewitness sketch
of the dome's construction.
And it's a scathing criticism of Brunelleschi's methods.
The critic, named Giovanni di Prato,
detailed what he considered to be Brunelleschi's mistakes.
The dome, he warned, was doomed to collapse.
(laughing)
(translated): He's really tearing him apart.
He's trying to tear apart Brunelleschi,
but in effect, Giovanni di Prato wasn't able to understand much
of what Brunelleschi was doing.
(speaking Italian)
NARRATOR: Di Prato may not have understood Brunelleschi's system,
but he was thorough in his observations.
He carefully sketched the rope lines Brunelleschi was using
to guide the construction.
More importantly for Ricci,
di Prato also drew the work platform
to which the ropes were attached.
Here, Ricci noticed something unusual:
a thin line curving around the platform.
To Ricci, it looked like a flower.
And he immediately saw it as the key to Brunelleschi's system.
(translated): When I saw the platform with the flower drawn on it,
I said, "Well, I'm at the right place!"
NARRATOR: Ricci incorporated the flower into the work platform
of his model, using it to guide each wall's construction.
Rope lines are important building tools even today,
and the Americans catch on quickly to Ricci's system.
One worker stationed on the platform
hooks a line to the flower.
Another on the top of the wall
handles the other end of the rope.
The rope controls the angle and the height of the bricks.
Can you see now?
Hey, can you hold that there for a second?
Concentrate on this one right here that's moving.
The one that Bob has a hold of, it sets the line up
for that spina pesce.
So it's essentially their guide.
NARRATOR: And that's why the shape of the flower is so important.
As the platform worker moves the line along the flower,
the rope transfers the curve of the flower to the wall.
This creates the inverted arch.
The walls may be strong, but for the dome to work,
they must meet together at the top.
One small miscalculation,
repeated hundreds of thousands of times,
would lead to disaster.
BOB ARNOLD: Here's the angle and as you go up,
it should follow that all the way up.
Say if this one's not correct,
as you get that dome closing up to the top,
it's not going to want to hit in the middle.
So you might, you know, the dome might be this way
or it might be this way.
NARRATOR: How could Brunelleschi know his dome was on the right track?
The answer is in the lines.
Criss-crossing from wall to wall,
they establish the center point.
And before any rope line guides a brick into place,
it must pass through that center.
Brick by brick, the walls of Brunelleschi's dome rise
until they meet at the top,
nearly 300 feet in the sky, and the dome is complete.
For Ricci, the ropes guiding the bricks provide the real key
to the mystery of the dome.
I can say with utmost certainty this is the true secret
of Santa Maria del Fiore.
NARRATOR: After two weeks of working on Ricci's dome,
the Americans seem convinced by his experiment.
This must be the way they have done it.
Without putting a support underneath there,
this would be the only way that it makes sense.
It's the flower and it's the herringbone pattern.
Those are the two things that solve the puzzle.
You wouldn't be able to build a dome like that
without those control measures.
NARRATOR: Massimo Ricci has now been working on his dome
longer than it took Brunelleschi to build the original.
His model will remain an open laboratory for those studying
Brunelleschi's methods
and as an argument for the importance of the flower.
It's possible that Ricci, unlike his hero,
will never see his work finished.
But if you look at the dates of the building, 1420 to 1436,
16 years...
That's the blink of an eye.
That's very, very quick.
And it's wonderful to think that he saw it completed.
He was able to look at it,
he was able to walk past the building and think to himself,
"I built that, I did that."
With the dome, Florence moves
into an entirely different dimension.
The dome becomes the hub of a new city, of a new world.
It is the expression of a self-confidence
that no longer knows limits.
People need works that can speak to them
of their own capacity to dream.
Brunelleschi's dome is perhaps the biggest
of those works in the history of world art.
This NOVA program is available on DVD.
To order, visit shoppbs.org, or call 1-800-playpbs.
NOVA is also available for download on iTunes.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org