facts about Italy: Italy has more churches than Spain, Portugal, France, Poland, Austria and Ireland combined
Only because most french churches have been burned down by muslims
Crumb
>>225866807do people just declare their house a church for tax breaks o algo?
>>225866807cool, post some nice onesthis one is special to me.
>>225866807these are the numbers for my autistic friends
>>225867233
>>225866807>Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while half of that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going to keep body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the useless trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to death with taxation to uphold a perishing Government?>As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of magnificence and misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred—and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth. >Look at the grand Duomo of Florence—a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said, “O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?”>Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral.
>>225866807Not for long
>>225867834nice, i was reading the wiki article about that church, it has a cool history.when i retire i will spend at least 3 months travelling all over italy, it's my dream.
Did you know that Italy is famous for processing kangaroo leather? Now you do.
>>225868084This guy was a proto-redditor. Not that it matters but his country is going to be less than 50% white in a few decades and nobody will be left to read his dense prose
>>225868084>>225868885>“What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems … a delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath!… >The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures — and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex, that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest … everywhere that a niche or a perch can be found about the enormous building, from summit to base, there is a marble statue, and every statue is a study in itself. … Away above, on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. … (Up on) the roof … springing from its broad marble flagstones, were the long files of spires, looking very tall close at hand, but diminishing in the distance. … We could see, now, that the statue on the top of each was the size of a large man, though they all looked like dolls from the street. … >They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands.”it's the same guy who wrote this.it seems he couldn't agree with himself
>>225866807And that's a good thing.
>>225867233this one perhaps, my closest one when I was a kid, we did biking around
>>225866807meloni tard spotted, here's your claude:This doesn’t hold up. Using parishes, the one unit the Church counts consistently: Italy has 25,595 parishes (CEI, 2020). Spain has 22,988 (Spanish Episcopal Conference, 2022), Poland 10,352 (2021), Portugal 4,574 (Vatican data, end of 2021), Austria about 2,956 and Ireland about 1,357. That is 42,227 without France, and a 2022 French Senate report puts France at around 36,000 parishes. So the six countries together have roughly 78,000 against Italy’s 25,600, about three times as many. Spain alone is at 90% of Italy’s total. Counting buildings makes it worse: the Observatoire du patrimoine religieux lists 50,999 Catholic buildings in France, ruins and disused churches included. Italy has an enormous religious heritage, but I can’t find any census that supports this claim.
