Ely Cathedral The relief scenes were built into the wall, so each face or statue was individually hacked off, but leaving many finely carved details, and numerous puzzles as to what the original scenes showed. After the reformation it was redeployed as the Parish Church (Holy Trinity) for the town, a situation which continued up to 1938. The central octagonal tower, with its vast internal open space and its pinnacles and lantern above, forms the most distinctive and celebrated feature of the cathedral. However, what Pevsner describes as Ely's 'greatest individual achievement of architectural genius' came about through a disaster at the
Milan Cathedral central site in Roman Mediolanum, that of the public basilica facing the forum. The first cathedral, the "new basilica" ("") dedicated to St Thecla, was completed by 355. It seems to share, on a slightly smaller scale, the plan of the contemporaneous church recently rediscovered beneath Tower Hill in London. An adjoining basilica was erected in 836. The old octagonal baptistery, the "Battistero Paleocristiano", dates to 335 and still can be visited under the Milan Cathedral. When a fire damaged the cathedral and basilica in 1075, they were rebuilt as the Duomo. In 1386, Archbishop Antonio da Saluzzo began construction