Yet =Milan= involves peculiarities that may be due to the dissensions of the Italian architects with the German and French who were called in at various times to collaborate in the work. So strong a German influence is perceptible in both the character and details, that the main design has been attributed to Heinrich of Grund. Constructed entirely of white marble, the exterior is distinguished not so much by structural grandeur as by decorative richness. The windows, said to be the largest in any Gothic Cathedral, have intricate and lace-like tracery; the walls are panelled with vertical string courses; the buttresses embellished with canopied niches, holding statues; lace-like again is the enrichment of the parapets of the roofs, while from them rises a forest of spiring finials, surmounted by the marble spire which was designed in 1440 by Brunelleschi. And in the interior, also, organic relation is sacrificed to imposing display and delight in embellishment. The dominating feature is the avenue of nave columns, nine on each side. They are 12 feet in diameter, over 100 feet high, and crowned above their capitals with a cluster of canopied niches, containing statues--a German feature. The columns isolate themselves in the design; count only as an avenue of columns, while their immense size dwarfs the height of the vaulting, the more so that the height of the side aisles made a triforium impossible, and reduced the clerestory to insignificant proportions, with mean small windows. And the impression of squatness in the vaulting is increased by the rupture which the canopied niches make between the pier shafts and vault ribs. Upward growth is arrested; organic relation violated by a merely decorative intrusion. To realise fully the diminution of structural impressiveness thereby produced, one may compare the Milan interior with that of Amiens or St. Ouen in Rouen. =Secular Gothic.=--It was in their secular architecture that the Italians used the Gothic with the greatest freedom. The official buildings of this period, when the government of the cities and communes still preserved a popular form, comprised the city hall or _podesta_ and the council hall, which was variously known as the _palazzo publico_, _palazzo communale_ or _palazzo del consiglio_. The most important example of a podesta is the =Palazzo Vecchio= in =Florence=, which was designed, 1298, by Arnolfo di Cambio, the first architect of the Cathedral. We shall study it later in comparison with the beginnings of the Renaissance (p. 358). Opposite to it stands the =Loggia dei Lanzi=, an example of the open-air tribunes erected for popular ceremonies. Built in 1376 by the architects Benci di Cione and Simone di Talenti, its design is rather Romanesque than Gothic. Its name is derived from the fact that it was used as a guard house by the German spearmen of Cosimo I, after he had usurped the government of Florence and established his residence in the Palazzo Vecchio.