Miniature Buildings

Welcome. If you have not visited Minature Buildings before can I suggest you begin with my Aims and Scope article or at the Home Page. If you have visited before - welcome back. I hope this article is of interest to you.

Milan Cathedral

The Cathedral, or Duomo, in Milan is one of the World's greatest.  Next door there is a museum dedicated to its architecture and construction and within that museum is a room devoted to models of the museum.

Dominating the room is an amazing giant model of the Duomo. We visited it in February 2026 as part of our Spring tour.

The south transept

An idea of its size can be gauged from this picture including my wife:

The 'north face' of the model is open to show the underlying construction.

It was not made by a single modeller and was modified over nearly four centuries:

Just as on the prototype Duomo, the detail included on the model is astonishing:

Within the model room there were also other models of the facade.  The museum has preseved the surviving architectural models "used over the centuries as fundamental work tools to evaluate the design choices under consideration by the architects in charge of the cathedral".

These pieces in the models room are not the only miniature buildings within the museum but the others are included within a broader article on models seen in Milan.