for the shadow of
the dome falls right across the city itself every morning and evening.
And indeed the Piazza del Duomo of Florence is still the centre of the
life of the city, and though to some this may be matter for regret, I
have found in just that a sort of consolation for the cabs which Ruskin
hated so, for the trams which he never saw; for just these two necessary
unfortunate things bring one so often there that of all the cathedrals
of Italy that of Florence must be best known to the greatest number of
people at all hours of the day. And this fact, evil and good working
together for life's sake, makes the Duomo a real power in the city, so
that everyone is interested, often passionately interested, in it: it
has a real influence on the lives of the citizens, so that nothing in
the past or even to-day has ever been attempted with regard to it
without winning the people's leave. Yet it is not the Duomo alone that
thus lives in the hearts of the Florentines, but the whole Piazza. There
they have established their trophies, and set up their gifts, and
lavished their treasure. It was built for all, and it belongs to all; it
is the centre of the city.

This enduring vitality of a place so old, so splendid, and so beloved,
is, I think, particularly manifest in the Church of S. Giovanni
Battista, the Baptistery. It is the oldest building in Florence, built
probably with the stones from the Temple of Mars about which Villani
tells us, and almost certainly in its place; every Florentine child,
fortunate at least in this, is still brought there for baptism, and
receives its name in the place where Dante was christened, where
Ippolito Buondelmonti first saw Dianora de' Bardi, where Donatello has
laboured, which Michelangelo has loved.

Built probably in the sixth or seventh century, it was Arnolfo di Cambio
who covered it with marble in 1288, building also three new doorways
where before there had been but one, that on the west side, which was
then closed. The mere form, those octagonal walls which, so it is said,
the Lombards brought into Italy, go to show that the church was used as
a Baptistery from the first, though Villani speaks of it as the Duomo;
and indeed till 1550 it had the aspect of such a church as the Pantheon
in Rome, in that it was open to the sky, so that the rain and the
sunlight have fallen on the very floor trodden by so many generations.
Humble and simple enough as we see it to-day before the gay sp