Habakkuk

The Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Museum of the Works of the Cathedral) in Florence sounds like one it's going to be one of the dullest museums going. Actually (and this may be the first genuinely useful Tuscany travel tip posted on this blog) I'd say a trip to the Museum trebles the value of a visit to the Duomo; the Duomo being, along with the Uffizi, the thing a visitor to Florence is most likely to go to.

The museum is brilliant for several reasons:
- The Duomo is enormous, there's no way you can see all the statutes and details placed high up on the facade, the museum has them all displayed
- In addition, those statues, reliefs and bits and pieces in the facade are mostly copies now for reasons of wear and tear, and changing fashion (more below), so what you see in the museum are the originals
- It has genuinely interesting details of the building of the cathedral and its facade. Despite the cathedral standing since before the Middle Ages the current facade was only built in the twentieth century because every time a prolonged commissioning period or competition approached completion, the person in charge would change their mind, die or be replaced, the commission would be cancelled and the years would pass before anyone could agree to try commissioning it again. The same went for the interior of the cathedral - it was cleared out several times to be replaced with more fashionable works.
- It includes explanation of Brunellschi's incredible feat of engineering to get the enormous dome to the cathedral designed and constructed, and added to the existing structure
- It contains numerous pieces of art that are worth a visit on their own account - Donatello and Della Robbia's brilliant choir lofts, Michelangelo's Pieta, Donatello's Mary Magdalene and Ghiberti's original bronze cast baptistry doors, The Gates of Paradise.

Della Robbia, above, and Donatello, below

- Finally, it includes my favourite piece in any of the museums and exhibitions we've seen so far: Donatello's Habakkuk, a sculpture of one of the Old Testament prophets. Below, even my shoddy camera phone can't completely detract from an astoundingly powerful piece of art.