A lively and intriguing tale of the competition between two artists, culminating in the construction of the Duomo in Florence, this is also the story of a city on the verge of greatness, and the dawn of the Renaissance, when everything artistic would change.

Florence_s Duomo - the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral - is one of the most enduring symbols of the Italian Renaissance, an equal in influence and fame to Leonardo and Michaelangelo_s works. It was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, the temperamental architect who rediscovered the techniques of mathematical perspective. He was the dome_s _inventor_, whose secret methods for building remain a mystery as compelling to architects as Fermat_s Last Theorem once was to mathematicians. Yet Brunelleschi didn_t direct the construction of the dome alone. He was forced to share the commission with his arch-rival, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose _Paradise Doors_ are also masterworks. This is the story of these two men - a tale of artistic genius and individual triumph.