FaithWorld

(Santa Croce Basilica in Florence, Italy, February 26, 2010/Alessandro Bianchi )

For lovers of Italian art, it’s as close as you can come to ascending a stairway to heaven and looking angels in the eye. For the first time after a major restoration, the scaffolding that has shrouded the 850 sq m (9,150 sq ft) of frescoes of the Capella Maggiore in Florence’s famed Santa Croce Basilica will not be dismantled immediately.

Instead, for about a year, a small number of visitors will be able to don hard hats and clamber up the clanking steps to admire the 600-year-old frescos of Agnolo Gaddi, the last major “descendant” of the Giotto school, from close up.

(Scaffolding shroud the 600-year-old frescoes of the Capella Maggiore in the Florence's Santa Croce Basilica April 7, 2011/ Alessandro Bianchi)

“Climbing up the scaffolding and standing in precisely the same spot where the artist stood is a bit like travelling in a time machine,” said Alberto Felici, one of the team that spent five years restoring the frescoes. “You can re-live the emotions and the atmosphere that the painter experienced 600 years ago,” he said, speaking some 30 m (90 ft) above the basilica’s ground floor.

(A newly restored fresco of a saint at the top of the nave of Florence's Santa Croce Basilica April 7, 2011. For about a year, a small number of visitors will be able to don hard hats and clamber up the clanking steps to admire the 600-year-old frescos of Agnolo Gaddi, the last major "descendant" of the Giotto school, from close up/ Alessandro Bianchi)

Since the next restoration may not take place for centuries, it is the chance of a lifetime to get within inches of a masterpiece that helped pave the way for the Renaissance.

Read the full story here.

Here’s a reuters video on the porject:

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