Date: Tuesday, 14 October 2025, at 12:15 pm
Venue: Seminar Room Bruguier Pacini, DEM
Speaker and Title:
Andrea Fontanella (University of Milano)
Marmora Super Aquam: Waterways as a Cost-Effective Solution for Transporting Raw Materials for the Construction of Milan Cathedral
Abstract:
he objective of this paper is to highlight the importance waterways had in the secular realisation of the Milan Cathedral, the most important monument of the city, focusing on the economic and financial perspectives. Specifically, we investigate the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo (an organisation specifically established to conduct the construction of the cathedral) accounts, highlighting how waterways were used not only as the fastest and the most suitable way to transport raw materials from the sites of extraction to the site of construction, but also a solution to reduce the high costs of the whole construction process.
To do so, we choose to analyse the early years of the secular history of the construction of the Milan cathedral, during which strategic decisions were taken, including those about the costs, the procurement of financial and non-financial resources and about the physical structure itself of the building. The cost issue was of high importance since the very beginning of the project, in 1386, and the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo was constantly focused not only on the construction of the cathedral, but also on finding solutions to decrease the costs.