Taj Mahal vs Florence Duomo

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The Taj Mahal (; lit. 'Crown of the Palace', [ta?d? ?m???(?)l]) is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the southern bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (reigned from 1628 to 1658) to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. The grave is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall. Building of the mausoleum was basically completed in 1643, but work continued on other stages of the job for the following 10 years. The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be approximately 32 million rupees, which in 2020 will be approximately 70 billion rupees (about U.

S. $916 million). The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans under the guidance of a board of architects led by the court architect to the emperor, Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. The Taj Mahal was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for being'the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage'. It is viewed by many as the best example of Mughal architecture and a symbol of India's rich history. The Taj Mahal attracts 7--8 million visitors annually and in 2007, it had been announced a winner of the New 7 Wonders of the World (2000--2007) initiative.

Source: Wikipedia

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Florence Cathedral, officially the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Italian pronunciation: [katte?dra?le di ?santa ma?ri?a del ?fjo?re]; in English'Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower'), is the cathedral of Florence, Italy (Italian: Duomo di Firenze). It was started in 1296 in the Gothic style to a style of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The outside of the basilica is confronted with polychrome marble panels in various shades of pink and green, bordered by white, and contains an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival façade by Emilio De Fabris. The cathedral complex, in Piazza del Duomo, comprises the Baptistery and Giotto's Campanile. These three buildings are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Website covering the historic centre of Florence and are a significant tourist attraction of Tuscany. The basilica is one of Italy's largest churches, and before the development of new structural materials in the modern era, the dome was the biggest in the world. It remains the biggest brick dome ever constructed. The cathedral is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Florence, whose archbishop is Giuseppe Betori.

Source: Wikipedia