Gates to Paradise: Creating metal doors for 11th-12th century churches

This month’s research trip lead us to another one of Barisano’s doors in Trani. To protect the original door, a copy was placed on the outside of the cathedral so we could quietly work on the original inside the cathedral, while outside the festivities of the Croce di Colonna with lots of fire works were ongoing. Of course we could not miss to visit also Bari to study the lion handles of another contemporary door: it turned out that they were made of gilded copper! Canosa and the bronze doors of the Tomb of Bohemond had to be visited as well – including sound studies of opening and closing the doors. Finally, we went 800 m above sea level to visit Monte Sant’Angelo and documented one of the eight byzantine doors still preserved today in Italy: the door is in perfect condition and was coloured in red, green, and dark grey, and of course, silver. Even more, we found traces of gilding!