Greatness takes time. Case in point: The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore took over 140 years to complete. With over 4 million bricks, weighing over 40,000 tons and towering 10 stories high over Florence, Italy, this iconic landmark is the largest masonry structure in the world. If that’s impressive today, imagine the reaction in 1493 when construction was finally finished.

Strangely, the man who designed and built the domed roof of the Florence Cathedral had no previous architectural experience. The man in question was a goldsmith by the name of Fillipo Brunelleschi. By the time he was born, the cathedral had been under construction for 80 years, because the original design incorporated a dome, but no one knew how to make one.

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