When Giotto di Bondone first envisioned what would become one of the signature structures of Florence, Italy, he may have had no notion of something called claustrophobia.

Europeans in the 14th century stood only 5 feet, 7 inches tall on average. And so climbing something like Giotto’s Campanile – the bell tower that stands next to Florence’s famous Duomo – would have been a less challenging feat than for far larger 21st-century beings.

For a 6-feet, 1-inch claustrophobe of today, plodding up the tower can be quite a chore – even if coming down is somewhat easier.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The tower is called Giotto’s Campanile because it was designed by the man who, born into humble circumstances, would become one of Italy’s most renowned artist/architects – recognized around the world by a single name: Giotto.

“Giotto di Bondone’s work represents a pivotal moment in art history because his work was a breaking point with previous artistic tradition,” wrote the art historian Cinzia Franceschini. She stresses that Giotto broke with “the rigor and hieratic solemnity of Byzantine icons, in favor of art that was closer to reality.”

Anyone who’s ever traveled to Italy is likely to be familiar with Giotto’s work. In Florence alone, he was responsible for the “Crucifix” that graces the Church of Santa Maria Novella, the Uffizi Gallery’s “Madonna Ognissanti, ” and (though disputed) the “Baroncelli Polyptych” of the Basilica of Santa Croce.

Giotto’s works aren’t confined to just Florence. They can be seen as well in Assisi, Padua, Bologna and even The Louvre in Paris and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the work most easily seen is Florence’s Campanile.

That’s because one of the main walking routes in Florence goes from the Piazza del Duomo, the square that fronts both the Duomo and the Baptistery of St. John, and proceeds down Via dei Calzaiuoli toward the Piazza della Signoria, site of the majestic Palazzo Vecchio.

And if you take that walk, typically along with hundreds of others during your evening passegiata – maybe while munching on a cone slathered with your favorite gelato – you’ll at some point pass by Giotto’s architectural masterpiece.

This is how Henry James described what he calls “the bell-tower of Giotto” in his collection of travel essays “Italian Hours”: “No beholder of it will have forgotten how straight and slender it stands there, how strangely rich in the common street, plated with coloured marble patterns, and yet so far from simple or severe in design that we easily wonder how its author, the painter of exclusively and portentously grave little pictures, should have fashioned a building which in the way of elaborate elegance, of the true play of taste, leaves a jealous modern criticism nothing to miss.”

That’s how a master writer sees things. For those of us who have less of an artsy soul, Giotto’s Campanile looks like a singular, slender tower rising a full 278 feet above the piazza floor. The one thing that I find so noticeable is that the red-, green- and white-colored marble exterior that James writes about takes on a different hue depending on the time of day. Often in the sunshine, the reds are less noticeable than the green, with both at any time of day contrasting fluidly with the white.

I could go on an extended explanation of how Giotto was granted the commission in 1334, how he died just three years later and how the project was completed in 1359 under the supervision of Giotto’s student Andrea Pisano and later Francesco Talenti. And of how the exterior of the various levels are decorated by sculptures added throughout the 14th and 15th centuries by artists such as Donatello and Nanni di Bartolo. But you can get a better overview by clicking here.

Climbing up, and then down, the tower is what I want to describe. The Duomo’s official website warns that those prone to heart problems and/or claustrophobia should probably avoid attempting the 414 steps to the top level. But I like a challenge, and my heart is in decent enough shape.

At least it was two decades ago when I found the courage to first make the climb. Barely a dozen steps in I began feeling that closed-in sensation familiar to all claustrophobes. It became especially pressing whenever the person in front of me slowed down to let someone who was descending pass by.

The narrowness of the passageway, combined with one body seemingly on top of me and another one forcing me into the stone wall on my right, had me taking deep breaths just to control my panic. And that’s in addition to the physical effort required simply to ascend those steep steps.

Stopping at the first of the three loggias gave me some respite, and allowed me the time to calm myself, not to mention catch my breath. Having access to the tall windows certainly helped. And then I forged on, again feeling the oppressive crush as I trudged up one step after the next, past the second loggia and finally emerging at the top.

That, of course, is where you can get one of the best overviews of Florence’s historic center. Just walking out onto the caged-in terrazza and looking out over the city is worth any amount of irrational fear (the bane of all claustrophobes) you might initially feel. (Click here to get a video feel for the experience.)

And the descent? It’s less of a problem because, for reasons likely having to do with perspective, the passageway seems to open up when you look down. At least it did for me, and I remember feeling like I could have skipped down those 414 steps, had I not had to slow up for the hesitant movers in front of me.

Giotto never lived to experience the feeling of climbing the tower he envisioned, which is too bad. But for more than six and a half centuries, the rest of the world has. And the experience is exhilarating.

Even for the claustrophobes among us.