The tall tower rising beside the cathedral, banded in the same white, green, and pink marble, is Giotto's Campanile — the bell tower, nearly three hundred feet of it, one of the most decorated towers in Europe. And the setup should stop you cold: it's named for a painter.
Giotto was the most famous artist in Italy — the man credited with dragging painting out of the flat gold Middle Ages and giving figures weight, and faces, and grief. So naturally, when the city wanted a magnificent bell tower, they handed the job to their star painter, who had never engineered a tall building in his life. He designed it, laid the foundation and the first level, and then died, about three years in. A painter designed one of the great towers of Europe and lived to build exactly one floor of it.
There's a story about how he got that famous. The pope wanted proof of his skill before hiring him, and sent a messenger to collect a sample drawing. Giotto, the story goes, dipped his brush, planted his elbow
like a compass point, and in one smooth motion swept out a perfect circle, freehand — then told the man, that's enough, send that. In Florence they still say someone is "rounder than Giotto's O" when he's a little too pleased with himself. Whether he actually did it or not, the fact that this is the legend tells you the reputation: the painter who could out-draw a machine.
What he left behind, o
