Why is the future of an iconic Milan monument in danger?

MILAN — Even in a city with La Scala, the glorious opera house, the cathedral of milan It reigns as the most beloved monument in Italy’s fashion and financial capital.

But the Duomo, as it’s known, has also been an extraordinarily high-maintenance icon for six centuries, demanding constant care essentially since construction began in 1386.

The cathedral, along with the roughly 3,400 statues and carvings that adorn its nooks, and its buttresses, pinnacles, and spires, are made of a rare pink marble quarried from a single quarry on the slopes of the Alps some 60 miles to the north. The unique physical and chemical characteristics of the stone make it particularly beautiful, but also particularly fragile.

“Marble can suddenly shatter,” said Francesco Canali, site manager for Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the association that has been responsible for the monument’s restoration and preservation since 1387. Marble veins contain ferrous materials, and when they or iron pins placed to join the stones together rust, expand and break the marble, Canali said.

The record heat waves of recent summers mean that temperature differences between the parts of the cathedral most exposed to the sun and those in the northern shadow can put additional pressure on the monument. And pollutants deposit black scabs.

The cost of all cleaning and maintenance has always been high, and now the cathedral, which is “owned by the Milanese”, as its archpriest, the Reverend Gianantonio Borgonovo, likes to say, has been looking to increase private aid to cover some of the expense.

Officially, the cathedral was completed in 1965, 579 years after it began, leading to the saying for something that never ends: “è come la fabbrica del Duomo”, or “like the building of the cathedral”.

But the continued need for marble has been good for the Candoglia quarry.

Experts at Veneranda Fabbrica closely monitor the Duomo’s structural well-being, with the entire monument wired with sensors providing constant digital measurements. Twice a year a physical revision of the statuary and decorative elements is carried out.

Veneranda Fabbrica’s work was subsidized for years by donations and bequests from wealthy Milanese, but also from locals of more modest means who deposited valuables in boxes on the site that would later be auctioned.

“The Duomo has always been the home of the Milanese,” said Fulvio Pravadelli, general manager of Veneranda Fabbrica.

Over the years, hundreds of statues and decorative motifs have been replaced. Carvers have sneaked in contemporary figures, including boxer Primo Carnera, a world champion in the 1930s, and a small head of Abraham Lincoln.

“The beauty of our work is to make something emerge from a piece of marble that wasn’t there,” said Paolo Sabbadini, a carving expert who said that when a piece he was replicating was particularly worn, he added a personal touch, even even though he knew that 100 meters above the ground, it was unlikely to be noticeable.

“It has to be done right, even if you can’t see it, otherwise we wouldn’t have any reason to be here,” Sabbadini said.

By: ELISABETTA POVOLEDO