Bubblegum Gothic

Like: “Yes, I’m historically significant. Also, I’m dessert.”

This feels like someone mixed Leonid Afremov’s bold, saturated city energy with early Fauvism (hello Matisse/Derain color confidence) and then applied it with pure “no second-guessing” joy. The cathedral stops being architecture and becomes attitude — dramatic, cotton-candy holy, and fully unbothered.

And that texture… we’re talking impasto: thick, buttery paint laid on like frosting. In real life, those ridges catch light and cast tiny shadows, so the surface sparkles and shifts as you move. That’s the trick—your eye reads the bumps as motion, so even a still plaza feels like it’s humming.

Quick fun fact for your next dinner party flex: the Duomo took nearly six centuries to complete. Six! By the time it was finished, Europe had gone through the Renaissance, the Baroque period, the Enlightenment, and at least one awkward powdered-wig trend. Talk about a long-term project.

My favorite part is the crowd—little flicks of color instead of faces. It turns people into rhythm. Proof that a city gathering in one spot becomes its own kind of brushstroke.