“Remember to enter with devotion into this devout house of worship of the Virgin”

These words carved into the pavement of the cathedral, at the entrance to the central nave, are addressed to anyone entering this splendid cathedral. Crossing its threshold is not simply a physical passage but the beginning of a spiritual journey. The place you are entering, more than being a remarkable setting for art, is first and foremost a dwelling place (domus), the house of God and His people, the Church, who here live the fundamental moments of their history. Even before you came in, the façade, with its profusion of marble, announced that you were approaching a unique space, in which the predictions of the ancient prophets carved on the scrolls displayed by the beautiful statues by Giovanni Pisano are fulfilled.  Now you have entered the church, an edifice built to be the image of a reality made up of flesh and spirit, the Church-community: a reality of people whose lives have been changed forever by the One who died to save them from evil: Jesus Christ. In here is venerated the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first woman to experience the effects of salvation: Immaculate and without sin, Assumed into Heaven to share the glorious destiny of Her Son, the Virgin is the image par excellence of the Church, the Mother to whom the faithful have always turned to obtain grace from God, just as the . . .