The first overall restoration of Giotto’s Bell Tower of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore will begin on 9 March 2026. A historic appointment with conservation, which no generation had ever seen before, given that the interventions documented since 1939 had only concerned parts of the monument, never the whole.
Conceived by Giotto in 1334, continued by Andrea Pisano and completed in 1359 by Francesco Talenti, the Campanile is one of the most representative bell towers of Italian Gothic: 85.60 meters high, the third tallest building in the city after Brunelleschi’s Dome (116 metres) and Arnolfo’s Tower of Palazzo Vecchio (95 metres), entirely covered in polychrome marble – white, red Cintoia and greenery of Prato. The decision to intervene was made in view of the factual evidence of the site, given the progressive deterioration of the marble covering, marked by erosion, detachments and alterations due to the combined action of atmospheric pollution, climatic agents and environmental factors, with particularly evident critical issues in the protruding elements of the summit terrace.
Figures and estimated times for the intervention
The works will last approximately four years and will require an allocation of more than 7 million euros, entirely financed by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. The construction site was designed with an avant-garde logic: the restoration will proceed in phases from top to bottom, and as a section is completed, the scaffolding will be lowered to immediately reveal the part already restored. In this way, only the portion you are working on at a given moment will remain covered.
The first phase of the intervention will be dedicated to the assembly of the scaffolding, an operation that will last four months, until the end of July 2026, followed by the actual start of the restoration. During the works it will be possible to access the panoramic terrace.
The renovation of Piazza del Duomo
The Campanile construction site is part of a larger plan. With a total investment of over 60 million euros, the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore will launch a series of interventions that will also involve the Collegio Eugeniano (€13,000,000) and the expansion of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (€39,000,000, a figure also including the acquisition of Palazzo Compagni, which will bring the museum’s exhibition spaces from 6,000 to approximately 11,000 meters squares, with new rooms for temporary exhibitions and areas dedicated to visitors, for completion expected by 2030).
For real-time updates on the construction site we recommend following the official website of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore.
