Reflections on the Dome of St Paul's Cathedral

Sir Christopher Wren died 290 years ago yesterday. I'm sorry I didn't get to London in time to blip it yesterday. As a young man Wren was a scientist based in Oxford, but in 1665 he went to Paris. He is said to have been impressed by the architecture of the Sorbonne and Les Invalides, both of which have classical domes. He came back to London in 1666 and produced the best architectural drawing we possess of the crossing of the medieval St Paul's Cathedral, that's the area underneath the tower. The drawing is in All Souls College Oxford today. The cathedral had lost its amazing spire more than a century before, when it caught fire, possibly due to a lightning strike, and crashed through the roof. Wren's drawing shows the dome that he proposed to build on top of the tower to replace the missing spire. His proposal was still under discussion when the old cathedral was gutted by the Great Fire of London. It's curious to think that we might have had a dome by Wren on top of St Paul's Cathedral even if the new cathedral had never been built!