We saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one which had been standing these four hundred years, they said.

There are four staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn them.

Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the builders.

He is dead now.

The building was begun a little less than five hundred years ago, and the third generation hence will not see it completed.
The building looks best by moonlight, because the older portions of it, being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly with the newer and whiter portions.