Next time you take a stroll through the city center, walk by the Duomo between via del Proconsolo and via dei Servi and look up to the cathedral’s façade, right where the street softly curves around it. Set between stripes of green and white marble you will notice a cow’s head sticking out from a console. Legend accredits quite a delicate story to that isolated ornament.
During the building of the new cathedral, sometime at the end of the thirteenth century, a baker lived, worked and sold his goods not far from this spot. The baker’s wife is said to have had a long-term affair with one of the master carpenters who was working on the cathedral. Eventually, the secret lovers were discovered, accused, condemned by the ecclesiastical court, and sentenced never to see each other again. For revenge and as a sign of victory, the carpenter is said to have placed this cow’s head in good view from the baker’s shop as a constant reminder of the deceit, as in Italian cornuto (horned), stands for cuckolded and is as unfavorable a stigma as you can imagine. On a historical note less shrouded in legend, the cow was placed there to honor all the animals that were used to build the cathedral.
