Stained Glass Windows

Comparing the Venetian bridge of San Lorenzo today to a painting by Gentile Bellini from 1500, one can see that much about this city on the water has not changed. The same is true regarding the town's churches and their artistic treasures.

Titian, the famous artist born "Tiziano Vecellio" in a small town north of Venice, is still regarded as one of the world's most influential painters. In facade1516, he began work on an altar piece for the Venetian basilica of Santa Maria dei Frari. About twenty-three feet (seven meters) high, that work - known as The Assumption of the Virgin - launched Titian's reputation. Surrounded by stained-glass windows, it remains in the same place for which it was created - five centuries ago.

Siena's treasures are even older. Its cathedral (the Duomo di Siena) was built in the thirteenth century and is still home to original stained glass. Duccio designed the round choir window (made in 1288) more than 250 years before Pastorini fashioned The Last Supper (which adorns the facade).

Inlaid-marble mosaics cover the floor, marble stripes decorate columns and colorful frescoes line the walls and ceiling of an adjoining library. The church was supposed to be even larger, but after new construction began (in 1339), the Black Death forced a change-in-plans. People in Siena died, and their partially constructed nave remains unfinished.

Florence, likewise decimated by the fourteenth-century plague, is just north of Siena. Its art treasures, cathedrals and stained-glass windows, are spectacular:

• The cathedral church, in Florence, is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. Filippo Brunelleschi designed its magnificent dome.

• The dome's interior is decorated with frescoes and stained-glass windows.

• Italian glass, from medieval times, is often characterized by its round shape.

• Such windows were made to fit within the architectural structure of a dome.

• Sunlit reflections, of those windows, are stunning in their own right.

Sunlight isn't quite as prevalent in the Benelux countries (Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg) as it is in Italy. But these countries also own magnificent glass treasures from medieval times.