Piazza del Duomo

The cathedral is over 150 metres long and the piazza around it is barely wider than the building, so at street level you cannot see the whole thing at once — you see marble, green and pink and white, filling the entire field of view, with Brunelleschi's dome above it and Giotto's campanile alongside. That is not a problem to solve, it is the subject.

The frames that work are the ones that accept the scale. Put a person against the striped marble and shoot tight: the pattern reads as background and the building stays enormous by implication. Or step back into one of the streets running into the piazza — Via dei Servi from the north-east, Via del Proconsolo, Borgo San Lorenzo — where the dome closes the view at the end and the narrow street frames it.

By mid-morning this is one of the busiest squares in Italy, with the queues for the dome climb, the baptistery and the campanile all crossing the space. Dawn is the only hour that belongs to nobody, and the low sun then comes from the east straight onto the facade. Walking the circuit around the cathedral is free and unrestricted; only the interiors and the climbs are ticketed.