From the Pantheon to the present: twenty experts retrace the history of the cupola, the most lasting and widespread symbol of expression of architectural thought.
[The mirror of the sky. Forms, meanings, techniques and functions of the cupola from the Pantheon to the 20th century] The book contains 24 contributions on the history and evolution of the cupola. This architectural structure is analyzed from the technique of fictile tubes of Roman and early Christian building, to the cupolas of the Renaissance in Tuscany, Umbria, Latium; from the cupola of St. Peter’s and its structural problems to that of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, the revolutionary masterpiece of Brunelleschi; from the baroque cupolas and their decoration, to the theoretical issues approached in architectural treatises; from the solutions of the 1700s to recent works in reinforced concrete, all the way to the development of this typology in the Islamic world.