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The Veneto: Padua and Verona               Emilia-Romagna: Bologna
and Ferrara




 

Bologna has always been an important city, being well positioned on the Via Emilia, for trade and pilgrims, but its government has always been turbulent. During what may be called it's glory years it was a Papal State, threatened with various interventions and bickering nobles, and then the Bentivoglio family dominated for most of the 15th century, several assassinations notwithstanding, and the time of what might be described as their court saw some fine building and painting, although they were not big-time patrons themselves. This century saw artists from outside Bologna making the running, especially the Ferrarese Francesco dl Cossa and Ercole de' Roberti.
 

If your time in Bologna is short the highlights are....
San Domenico
San Giacomo Maggiore
(and Santa Cecilia)
San Martino
San Petronio
Santo Stefano
&
The Certosa Monumental Cemetery

On this page

Corpus Domini
Duomo San Pietro
Madonna dei Poveri
Madonna del Monte
Madonna di San Luca see San Luca

San Barbaziano
San Bartolomeo see Santi Bartolomeo e Gaetano
San Basilio
San Benedetto
San Clemente
San Colombano
San Domenico
San Donato
San Fillipo see Santa Maria di Galliera
San Francesco
San Giacomo Maggiore
San Giorgio in Poggiale
San Giovanni Battista dei Celestini
San Giovanni in Monte
San Girolamo della Certosa
San Giuliano
San Giuseppe
San Luca
San Martino San Martino Maggiore
San Mattia
San Michele in Bosco
San Nicolò degli Albari
San Paolo in Monte dell'Osservanza
San Paolo Maggiore
San Petronio
San Procolo
San Rocco
San Salvatore see Santissimo Salvatore
San Sigismondo
San Vittore

Sant'Antonio Abate
Sant'Apollonia di Mezzaratta
Sant'Isaia
  On page 2
 
Santa Caterina di Saragozza
Santa Caterina di Strada Maggiore

Santa Cecilia see San Giacomo Maggiore
Santa Cristina
Santa Lucia

Santa Maria degli Angeli
Santa Maria dei Bulgari
Santa Maria dei Servi
Santa Maria del Baraccano
Santa Maria della Carita
Santa Maria della Misericordia
Santa Maria della Pietà (dei Mendicanti)
Santa Maria della Pioggia
Santa Maria della Visitazione al Ponte della Lame
Santa Maria della Vita
Santa Maria delle Muratelle
Santa Maria di Galliera
Santa Maria e San Valentino della Grada
Santa Maria Labarum Coeli (La Baroncella)
Santa Maria Maddalena
Santa Maria Maggiore

Santi Bartolomeo e Gaetano
Santi Filippo and Giacomo
Santi Giuseppe e Ignazio
Santi Gregorio e Siro
Santi Naborre e Felice
Santi Vitale e Agricola
Santissima Annunziata
Santissima Trinita
Santissimo Salvatore
Santo Spirito
Santo Stefano

Page 1

 

Corpus Domini
Via Tagliapietre


History
Known locally as the Santa for its containing the remains of Caterina Vigri (Saint Catherine of Bologna) who founded the Clarissan monastery here in 1456. Originally built from 1477 to 1480 the church retains a fine renaissance façade, with its terracotta portal and reliefs, attributed to Sperandio di Bartolomeo from Mantua. The monastery was suppressed in 1866. The church was much damaged at the west end by allied bombing during World War II, on the 5th of October 1943, including the loss of a large Annunciation fresco on the totally-destroyed west wall. The chapel of Saint Catherine was, it is said, miraculously untouched.

Interior
The interior of the building was rebuilt in baroque style by Gian Giacomo Monti in 1687.
Large, aisleless, with darkish grey stone walls and columns, but with much gilding and decoration. On both sides a deep fenced side chapel at the back is followed by a wide shallow open chapel (the left side one has the door to Saint Catherine's chapel - press the buzzer button marked Campenello and wait). Then a shallow small fenced chapel each side (the right one has the tomb of the physician Luigi Galvani) is followed by the transept and the shallow rectangular apse. Also buried here, in the centre of the nave, is the scientist Laura Bassi Veratti, the first European woman to obtain a teaching post, in 1732.
Seated in a glass case in her chapel (which had been her cell) is Saint Catherine de’ Vigri (1413-1463), locally greatly venerated. Frescoes here are by Marcantonio Franceschini, with stucco work by Giuseppe Mazza. It's a small, full and intensely Catholic space of gold and cherubs. And reliquaries and a mummified nun.
The art includes The Transit of Saint Joseph and The Communion of the Apostles by Franceschini. Two paintings by Ludovico Carracci in the chapel of the Rosario in the right transept - The Virgin at the Liberation of the Elect from Limbo (aka Jesus Appearing to the Virgin and the Patriarchs) and The Assumption.

Saint Caterina Vigri
Caterina was born in Bologna in 1413, the daughter of Giovanni Vigri, a Ferrarese and an ambassador to the court of Nicolò III Este and so became a lady-in-waiting  educated at the court in Ferrara, studying Latin, calligraphy, illumination, painting and music. At 13 she decided to live a life of prayer, took vows and helped found a Clarissan monastery in Ferrara called Corpus Domini. In 1456 Caterina was called back to Bologna with fifteen sisters to found a new monastery of Corpus Domini, so that after her death (on March 9th 1463, now her feast day) she was made the city's co-patron saint together with Saint Petronio. She became a Beata in 1592, but was not canonized until 1712. Examples of her writings, and possibly paintings, are to be found in her chapel, and in the small museum off of the second chapel on the left. Her only certain painted work is a 518-page illuminated breviary illustrated in a simple needlework-like style. She is probably not a rarity as a painting nun, but her local fame and canonisation means that her works get more attention and study - she became the patron saint of Bologna's painter' guild, the Accademia Clementina, in 1710. There's even the violeta, the bowed instrument she played on, which is in as perfect a state of preservation as her corpse. Some of the laude and other songs found amongst her writings have been reconstructed and recorded by the excellent Italian early music group La Reverdie as I Dodici Giardini - Cantico di Santa Caterina da Bologna.

Lost art in the Pinacoteca
A small Resurrection panel by Antonio Vivarini from around 1450. A Virgin and Child with Saint Elizabeth and the Young John the Baptist with two devotees (1523/5) by Innocenzo da Imola. A crowded and not-too-mannerist Adoration of the Magi by Prospero Fontana of c.1569, where the youngest magus looks out at us, holding his respectfully-doffed crown, looking like a portrait.


Opening times 9.00 - 12.00 & 3.00 - 7.00
Capella della Santa Caterina: 9.30 - 11.30 & 4.00 - 5.45
 

 

 

               

The photos flanking the bomb-damage scene (pretty much the before to my interior photo's after) show the west end, with its Annunciation fresco, and the west front, both before the bombing.
 
Duomo
Cattedrale Metropolitana di San Pietro

The word duomo comes from the Latin domus, meaning the house of the Lord. So nothing to do with domes.

History

Said to have been founded in the 6th century, rebuilt in the 10th century and destroyed by a fire in August 1131 and then an earthquake in 1222.
The then Archbishop Paleotti involved himself in much rebuilding in the 1560s and 70s, during which the vaulting collapsed. This work was not without opposition from Bologna's canon's who saw favouring San Pitro over San Petronio as evidence of papal power. The work included the now-lost Paleotti chapel dedicated in 1593. The current baroque church was begun on 26th March 1605 by architects Floriano Ambrosini to designs by Giovanni Ambrogio Magenta, removing every trace of the Romanesque original and much fine art. A new façade was added between 1743 and 1754, designed by Alfonso Torreggiani. Some damage to the roof and façade by bombing during WWII. This cathedral was never loved by the Bolognese as much as San Petronio, the church of their patron saint, not least because of its perception as a symbol of papal authority, in the same way that Venice preferred San Marco to its cathedral, which was also named for Saint Peter.

Interior
As is far from uncommon for duomos Bologna’s cathedral is not one of the most fascinating church interiors in the city. But it is at least baroque in a fairly restful way - the plasterwork is tastefully stony-coloured and quite light on the gilding
Just inside the door are two characteristic red Verona marble lions from the façade of the earlier Romanesque building. There are five bays either side of the nave, three tall with two short between, leading to chapels of the same height.
In the first south chapel on the right is a group of figures in a terracotta tableau portraying The Lamentation (see photo below right). It is the work of Alfonso Lombardi (1522–7) and was rescued from the crypt, where it had been for 418 years, and restored. The polychrome was removed in the Neoclassical era, when the figures were painted white.
The altarpieces are 18th-century and uninteresting. The second chapel on the right has the skull of Saint Anne, presented in 1435 by Henry VI of England to Niccolò Albergati, the Bishop of Bologna famously painted by Jan van Eyck. This relic had originally been housed in San Basilio, then a Carthusian church dedicated to Sant'Anna built for this purpose by Albergati. The decoration of the chapel - the trompe l'oeil columns and baldacchino - dates from 1906. Heavier gilding around the sanctuary, where there is a 12th. century polychrome Crucifixion group carved from cedar and looking oddly modern. The ceiling vaults above the high altar have a 1579 Paradise fresco by Prospero Fontana. The large lunette above the apse has an Annunciation by Ludovico Carracci from 1618, his last work.
The crypt was not open when I visited (see times below) but promises 16th-century frescos by Procaccini, Creti and Cremonini and bits of the old church. There's an uninteresting working sacristy also to the right of the sanctuary.

The Treasury (see times below, entrance to the left of the high altar) is five rooms of vestments, silver, processional crosses and reliquaries, as well as a damaged Virgin and Child by Lorenzo Monaco.

Lavinia Fontana connection
Lavinia Fontana was baptised here on 24th August 1552, her given name being testimony to her parents' ambitions for her, as it was then fashionable amongst the upper classes to give their children Roman names, and not the plainer names of Christian origin favoured by the working classes.

Campanile
The second tallest tower in Bologna (70 m). Designed by a Master Alberto in 1161 and began in 1184, it was topped with an exotic tapering roof in 1426. Within it is a circular tower, possibly that of the original Romanesque church. The bell is called la nonna (the grandmother) and is the largest hand-rung bell in the world.

Lost art
The family chapel built here by Archbishop Gabriele Paleotti, to designs by P. Fiorini, is now lost. It was dedicated on the 8th of September 1593 after a procession leading to the installation of 153 relics, including pieces of wood from the Cross, the Lance, and the Crib, pieces of the Virgin's clothing, and relics of local saints. The chapel was decorated with scenes from The Life of the Virgin by Bartolomeo Cesi, Ludovico Carracci, Denis Calvert, and Gian Battista Cremonini, with an altarpiece of The Assumption of the Virgin by Lavinia Fontana. Lavinia Fontana's 1593 Assumption is unusual for not including the Virgin's tomb or the apostles, with the Virgin borne over Bologna by angels. It is now in Pieve di Cento.
A fresco fragment of the head of Mary Magdalene Crying, now in the Pinacoteca, is all that's left of a monumental fresco of the Crucifixion in the Garganelli Chapel by Ercole de' Roberti, painted before 1486. He painted two large frescoes for the walls of this chapel, the other was The Dormition of the Virgin, which featured a portrait of the donor, Domenico Garganelli. Francesco del Cossa had initially been commissioned by Garganelli to cover the chapel with frescoes but had only finished the eight doctors and evangelists in the vaults when he died of the plague. Michelangelo and Vasari both praised Ercole's frescoes, the latter reporting that Ercole had spent 12 years completing them, 5 of them adding a seco elements. The chapel was demolished during the Baroque remodelling of 1605.
Drawings by Ercole survive, as do partial painted copies on canvas by later artists.
The tomb of Domenico Garganelli of 1478, the sole documented work of sculpture by Francesco del Cossa, was also in the Garganelli chapel, but is now in the Medieval Museum. As are the late-14th-century tomb slabs of Bartolomeo da Vernazza and of lecturer and magistrate Lorenzo Pini.

Opening times
7.30 am - 6.45 pm

Campanile and Treasury:
Saturday 2pm - 4.30pm

The Crypt and the Archaeological Area Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 2pm - 4.30pm.

Campanile - donation of €5

 





Madonna dei Poveri
Via Nosadella

History

In 1317 the oratory of Santa Maria delle Laudi was built here.  A few years later a hospice for the poor was established, in 1577 becoming a confraternity church dedicated to Santa Maria Regina dei Cieli. Called the Madonna dei Poveri because of a 16th century painting which inspired local devotion. Rebuilt in 1603, which is the church you see today, but the facade is 19th century. Suppression in 1798 and then decline from the end of the 19th century. In 1912 the church passed to the Priests of the Sacred Heart, who are still here.

Interior
Sweet small and odd and nicely not too gilded. No aisles, three chapels on each side, the middle two on each side with marble fences. A square and very decorated presbytery with a trompe l'oeil frescoed dome with prophets by Gian Gioseffo Dal Sole and Tommaso Aldrovandini c. 1692. Stucco work by Giuseppe Maria Mazza who is also responsible for the two statues of Moses and Noah, either side of the altar. The very populated stone carved and grand altar also has a mini Virgin & Child by T. Passarotti c. 1580 (see right). The middle chapel on the right had a nice Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist by L. Massari 1603. The first right has a 14th-century detached fresco fragment of the Virgin & Child.

Opening times

7.00 - 12.00 & 4.30 - 7.00
9.15 - 12.00 & 5.15 - 7.00





Madonna del Monte
Via dell'Osservanza

History

The Rotunda della Madonna del Monte dates back to the 12th century. Legend has it that in 1116, Picciola, daughter of Alberto Galluzzi and widow of OttaViano Piatesi, had retreated to what was then called the hill of St. Benedict. A dove appeared carrying pieces of wood in its beak and made a large circle with them. So Picciola felt herself to have divinely commanded to build a  circular church as a shrine to her dead husband.
Dante and Saints Dominic, Anthony and Bernardino are all said to have visited the church. Following the victory of the Bolognese in the battle at San Giorgio di Piano, where they defeated the Visconti troops, a tradition of a public procession to the Madonna del Monte was established, involving the Virgin and Child panel mentioned in Lost art below, beginning on August 14, 1443. The resulting prominence resulted in much artistic embellishment of the church, including some largely lost frescoes.
.
Upon suppression by Napoleon the convent was demolished in the early 19th century.  The lawyer Antonio Aldini, a minister and lackey of Napoleon, decided to build a villa up here, as Napoleon had thought highly of the views, and bought the nearby church of San Paolo in Monte and the Madonna del Monte. He demolished them and built the Villa Aldini incorporating the Madonna del Monte into the Rotunda, as a dining room. But the villa, begun in 1811, suffered the decline in the fortunes of both Napoleon and Aldini and was abandoned as early as 1816.
Restoration in 1938-39 by Guido Zucchini - a swastika remains amongst the painted decoration - returned the church to its religious origins after the frescoes of the 12 Apostles and Jesus were found in niches behind later paintings by Giovanni Battista Cremonini. These 19
frescoes of the 12th century, are a rare Bolognese Romanesque survival, looking very Byzantine in the photos. Some apostles remain and a later fragment of  the face of the Virgin. Also a blessing Christ from the 15th century.
In 1975 Pasolini filmed some scenes for his film Salò or the 120 days of Sodom at the villa.


Lost art
During the late 14th century a Virgin and Child panel attributed to Simone de' Crocifissi became locally much venerated. In 1443 it took the name of the Madonna della Vittoria due to its supposed intercession in the Bolognese victory at the battle against the Visconti mentioned above. This panel is now made much of in the church of Santissimo Salvatore. Another Virgin and Child by Simone, this time with angels and the small figure of the donor, Giovanni da Piacenza, is in the Pinacoteca.

Opening times

C
urrently closed for 'reorganization reasons'. The 12th century frescoes in the Rotunda were accessible thanks to the Touring Club Italiano Aperto per Voi scheme, but there is no current listing on their website.


 


 




Interior photographs courtesy of Tesori Abbandonati
 

San Barbaziano
via Cesare Battisti


History

Legend claims that there has been a church here since the 5th century, founded in 432 by Saint Petronius, with the monastery founded by Giocondo, Bishop of Bologna, in 485. There was certainly a monastery here by 1123, run by the Lateran canons. In 1480 the complex was taken over by the Girolamini order. Rebuilding of the church and convent by this order, under architect Pietro Fiorini, took place from 1608 to 1618. This work, in a mannerist style, was to make the interior more suited to the dictates of the Council of Trent. The new church had eight side chapels, some of them retained from the old church. The convent was suppressed by Napoleon on the 11th of March 1797, with the church deconsecrated and closed on the 3rd of May 1806.
The church was sold and stripped of its art and fittings and used to store hay and straw amongst other things. In 1870 it passed into military use for storage and was divided laterally. Use as a warehouse and garage followed and in 1922 there was a huge fire which damaged the walls and fittings but not the roof. In 2012 it was acquired by the Sovrintendenza per i Beni Culturali with promised to restore and put to good use for conferences and culture. Such plans, including conversion to a theatre, have been around since 1981, in fact, but it was 2018 when I poked my camera through a broken window to take the interior photo (right), and the church has continued to crumble into its current sorry state.

Interior
A single nave with a chancel and choir and four chapels each side, once sponsored by the Laghi, Palmieri, Banzi Melini, Sacchi, and Zambezzari families.

Lost art
Upon deconsecration all the art was removed. This included works by Errico Fiammingo, Giuseppe Monticelli, Lonardino, Giovanni Pietro Possenti, Giacomo Francia, Alessandro Mari, Girolamo Curti (il Dentone), and Giovanni Battista Ruggieri, amongst others.

Campanile
Demolished in 1817


 
San Basilio
Via Sant'Isaia
 
   



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


History

Originally the Carthusian church of Sant'Anna, founded in 1435 by Beato Niccolò Albergati, the Bishop of Bologna famously painted by Jan van Eyck, to house the head of Saint Anne which had been given to him by King Henry VI of England, in thanks for his part in soothing relations between England and France during the 100 Years’ War whilst acting as papal nuncio. This relic is now in the Duomo

In 1715 the church was rebuilt Baroquely, with  frescoes by Gioacchino Pizzoli. Suppressed by Napoleon, it fell into a state of disrepair becoming a shelter for the homeless and a salt and tar warehouse. In 1973 it passed to the Russian Orthodox Church, who renamed it and remain.

Opening times

Tuesday - Sunday 9.00 - 12.00 &  4.00 - 6.00
 






San Benedetto
Via dell'Indipendenza


History

First documented it 1202, the church belonged to the Benedictines and then passed to the friars of San Francesco di Paola in 1529 and was rebuilt with a new façade by Gian Battista Ballerini in 1606. The façade shown in the print below is the one on Via Galliera, which was moved in 1892 (essentially rotating the church 180˚) and rebuilt when the Via Indipendenza was created, adding a portico. Some damage during WWII, but this was repaired before the allies arrived.

Interior
Quite big, no aisles, beige walls, five bright orangey chapels each side with semi-circular clerestory windows above, which slightly light the trompe l'oeil decorated flattened barrel vaulted ceiling.
A4 plans of the interior detailing the art in various languages are on the table as you enter.
Some odd 19th-century paintings. Also odd is a little oval panel of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Baby Jesus by Giacomo Cavedoni, set into a field of lilies painted later, in the first chapel on the right. There's a Lucio Massari Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the last chapel on the left. Near this chapel you'll also find a Lippo di Dalmasio Virgin and Child panel fragment, propped up to the left of the presbytery arch, and looking shiny and smooth like a photo reproduction.
There's a Crucifixion by Giovanni Andrea Sirani (Elisabetta's father) in the sacristy down an inaccessible corridor off of the last right chapel, where there is also a separate oratory with more 19th-century works.

Opening times
Daily 8.00 - 12.00 & 4.00 - 6.00








 

 

 

 

 

 

 





A
n 18th-century print by Pio Panfili
 

   



 

San Clemente
Via Collegio di Spagna


History

Built within the Collegio di Spagna (strictly the Real Colegio Mayor de San Clemente de los Españoles) which was the work of Matteo Gattapone in the late 14th century. The imposing 16th-century main doorway leads into an atrium and a courtyard, with the upper façade of Gattapone's church facing you.
Over the high altar is the San Clemente Triptych,  of the Virgin and Child with Saints of c.1459 by Marco Zoppo with woodwork by locally renowned woodworker Agostino de' Marchi, commissioned by Luis da Fuente Encalada.
The courtyard has (had?) frescoes attributed  to Annibale Carracci the Younger. In the upper loggia is a fresco by Bartolommeo Bagnacavallo, of the Virgin and Child with Saints Elizabeth,  John, and Joseph, with an angel above scattering flowers.
Late-20th-century restoration work uncovered lost frescoes in some rooms.

Lost art
Saint Jerome Penitant of 1465 by Marco Zoppo

Frescoes by Camillo Procaccini in the apse, painted in 1582, were destroyed in 1914.
Saint Margaret
by G. Francia?  (Giacomo or Giulio, both were sons of Francesco)


 

San Colombano
Via Parigi


History

Tradition has a church on this site built around 616, after monks from the abbey of San Colombano in Bobbio founded a monastery here, lead by Bishop Pietro of Bologna, a student of Columbanus who had founded the monastery in Bobbio in 614.

The first documented evidence of this church dates to 1008, when Benedictines from the Abbey of St. Gall took over from the Columban monks. They were here until 1144 when then complex passed to Benedictine nuns, who remained until the early 13th century and were succeeded in turn by Carmelites and Poor Clares. Unrest amongst the nuns broke out in April 1304 over the election of two abbesses at the same time. After brawls broke out between the nuns, the bishop decided to suppress the monastery and keep the church.
Following many changes of ownership, in 1679 the complex was sold to the Republic of Lucca who used it as a boarding house for students at Bologna University. After further changes of ownership the church was suppressed and closed 1798. In 1891 the church reopened by the Congregazione della Beata, who also undertook restoration. Vergine Deconsecrated in 1959, it was finally bought in 2005 by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio who, after restoration work, opened it in 2010 to house the Tagliavini Collection of historical musical instruments. Concerts and classes are held here.

The church
The main church on the ground floor, consisting of a nave with side aisles, has four bays each side, the last pair architecturally and decoratively suggestive of a transept. There is a 15th century fresco panel of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints, in each of the second bays, said to both be by local artists. Also a 13th century Crucifixion fresco, half in the crypt and half in the church, attributed to Giunta Pisano.
The Chapel of the Madonna dell'Orazione (through the door on the right) was built in 1591 to house a fresco of the Virgin and Child, painted in 1399 by Lippo di Dalmasio which had been placed on the outside wall of the church in 1547, becoming the subject of local devotion and pilgrimage. It is now set into the altar. The fresco panels in here, of New Testament scenes, are by a later generation of Carracci followers than those who worked upstairs in the Oratory - Lucio Massari, Lorenzo Garbieri, Lionello Spada, Antonio and Paolo Carracci, Agostino's son and Ludovico's younger brother. (Leonello Spada was the fresco-painter famous for needing feeding on the job and making little pyramids of the bones of the animals in his dinner, with a sign on top saying 'Funeral of the Death Feasts'. He was a follower of Caravaggio who conjecture and gossip sometimes claim to have been much more.) The recently-uncovered trompe l'oeil ceiling frescoes are by Flamino Minozzi. From the late 1920s to 2005 the chapel was the headquarters of the Associazione Mutilati e Invalidi di Guerra.



The Oratory on the first floor (see photo above), was decorated in 1600 with 11 (12 originally?) fresco scenes from The Passion of Christ by pupils of Ludovico Carracci, including Guido Reni, Francesco Albani, Domenichino, Lucio Massari, Francesco Brizio, Lorenzo Garbieri and Paolo Carracci, the younger brother of Ludovico. There is also a flat, beamed and very decorated ceiling. The altarpiece is by Albani.
The late-Roman Crypt below the apse of the church, and a 12th century sepulchre, was discovered during the 2007 renovation. The work also revealed a centuries-buried 13th century fresco of The Crucifixion with the Virgin attributed to Giunta Pisano.

Part of the Genus Bononiae - Museums in the City cultural itinerary/walk.

Opening times Tuesday to Sunday 10.00am - 7.00pm Closed Mondays.
 
 




San Domenico
Piazza San Domenico
 


this church now has its own page

San Donato
Piazzetta Achille Ardigò
 


History

Some sources date an original church to 1210, and a fire in that year is mentioned.
But it seems it was built in 1454 originally, with the present church dating to the mid-18th century. Some historical sources claim that in 1505 the church was ruined by an earthquake. Suppressed on July 24, 1805.

The façade
The 1751 architectural Roccoc painting of the façade by Francesco Orlandi have faded badly, but tastefully.







San Francesco
Piazza San Francesco

History
The Franciscans had visited in Bologna in 1211, with St Francis preaching in the Piazza Maggiore in 1222. They originally establish themselves on the outskirts at Santa Maria delle Pugliole in 1219. But when Francis heard of the establishment, his order's first permanent house, he ordered them to evacuate it immediately. The order came here to stay in 1236 when Pope Gregory IX gave his approval for a larger complex, the church was consecrated by Innocent IV in 1251. In 1254 two vaults of the east end of the church collapsed, killing many construction workers and two friars and, it is thought, destroying a Crucifix by Giunta Pisano commissioned by the Franciscans like the, also lost, Crucifix the artist made for San Francesco in Assisi.  The church was completed early in 1263, but has been very altered since. The complex was converted into a barracks by Napoleon in 1796, and much art was destroyed or looted, but the complex returned to the Franciscans in 1886. Considerable work between 1886 and 1906, and then in 1948 after much bomb damage at the end of WWII (see photo far below).

The church
The broadly Romanesque façade of c.1250 has two 8th-century plutei carved with animals and birds either side of the door and 13th/14th-century majolica plaques embedded along the pitch of the roof.
In the bosky churchyard beside the east end, and backed by its Gothic buttresses, are three tombs raised on columns with green pyramidal tiled roofs of the 13th century (see far below right). They were found in fragments inside the church by restorer Alfonso Rubbiani and restored and erected here in 1891. They are the tombs of Glossators - writers of legal commentaries (or glosses) in the early years of the University of Bologna -  Accursio, his son Francesco, Odofredo and Rolandino de'Romanzi.
The entrance from the churchyard is through a side door under a porch between the two towers

Interior
The interior is more Gothic, big with a bare dark nave with two aisles, left stripped by the post-war rebuilding. Six hexagonal brick pillars and typical Bolognese brick vaulting, with many tombs along the walls. The sanctuary is more brightly lit, with an ambulatory on striped clusters of columns. There are taller arches in the bays before the sanctuary which gives a crossing effect but with no actual transept.
Excavations in the 1890s carried out by Alfonso Rubbiani revealed the foundations of an arcaded tremezzo (rood screen) between the nave and choir and detailed drawings of these were fortunately made. The upper storey of the screen had its own altars, as well as those at ground level. Very few of these screens remain, and there has been much recent research into their structure and function.
In the presbytery the spectacular marble altarpiece is by the brothers Jacobello and Pier Paolo dalle Masegne (1388–92), Venetian brothers who also worked in Venice on the exterior of the Palazzo Ducale and in San Marco. The main register's Biblical scenes include a Crucifixion and The Coronation of the Virgin, a favourite Franciscan subject, with scenes from The Life of Saint Francis. Eight busts of Prophets top some of the twenty-one pinnacles and there are fifty high-relief saints in the pilasters.
 The walls here have large high-up detached fresco panels by Francesco da Rimini.
The nine radiating chapels in the ambulatory are frescoed darkly in different styles with an odd mixture of 14th to 20th century art inside them. The central one has a 14th-century painted Crucifix attributed to Pietro Lianori. To the left is a chapel with a gold-ground altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Francis by Jacopo Forti (1485).
The late-14th century sacristy, formerly the Muzzarelli Chapel of 1397, is by Antonio di Vicenzo, who also designed the taller campanile here.
The left aisle had been closed off  since the earthquake of 2014 in 2018. It contains the rather special polychrome terracotta tomb of Pope Alexander V, who held court in Bologna and died here in 1410. It has an effigy by Niccolò di Pietro Lamberti (1423) (see right) and the lower part with angels, added in 1482, is fine work by Sperandio da Mantova.




Lost art in the Pinacoteca
Around 1270 the Franciscans commissioned a Crucifix (see left) for the tramezzo here, from The Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, who may have been a friar-artist sent from Assisi. The central part, which has Saint Francis at the foot of the cross, is in the Pinacoteca. The figures of the Mourning Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist from the ends of the cross arms are in the National Gallery in Washington. The whereabouts of the top figure of God the Father have been unknown since 1939. There is standing figure of Saint Helena in the main panel, probably added by Jacopo di Paolo c.1390.
Three fresco fragments signed by Francesco da Rimini from around 1320, showing Il miracolo del giovane di Lerida, three figures (one Saint Francis?) and four figures (The Triumph of Christ), the latter very damaged, taken from the old refectory here around 1880. They look very Lorenzetti. (Other fragments remain here or are to be found in the Walters in Baltimore ( a head of the Virgin, from the Triumph of Christ fresco), the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, and a private collection in Bologna.)
A large detached and very damaged fresco of the Last Supper
with Saints Catherine, Louis of Toulouse, and Francis and the archangel Raphael from the guests’ refectory here, painted  in 1340 by Vitale da Bologna. He also painted a fresco detached from a column here showing the Virgin Embroidering, now in the Museo della Storia di Bologna.
A damaged Crucifix from around 1415, with Saint Francis adoring at the base, and a large panel of Saint Bernardino and Stories from his Life from 1451, painted for the chapel of a confraternity devoted to the saint here, both by Giovanni da Modena.
A Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine with Saint Anthony of Padua and the Young John the Baptist by Giuliano Bugiardini (c.1525) from the Albergati chapel here. A Virgin and Child with Saints George, Sebastian, Francis and Bernardino and the Young John the Baptist, with angels (1526) by the Francia, from the Felicini chapel here.
A God the Father crowning panel and an Adoration of the Shepherds predella panel from an altarpiece painted by Ludovico Mazzolino (1524) for the Caprara chapel here. (A large panel, signed and dated 1524, showing Christ disputing with the Doctors, which Vasari rated as Mazzolino's best work, is in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie.) Mazzolino came from Ferrara and studied under Lorenzo Costa, Panetti and Roberti.
An interior Adoration of the Shepherds by Camillo Procaccini of 1584. L'Immacolata appare a Sant'Anna and a  buttery-coloured  Incarnation of the Virgin both by Bartolomeo Cesi of c.1593/5, from the Desideri chapel here. An Assumption of 1592 by Annibale Carracci from the Bonasoni chapel here. A Conversion of Saint Paul by Ludovico Carracci of 1587 from the Zambeccari chapel here. A crowded Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine with Saints Petronius, Procolo, Domenic, Francis and Floriano by Pietro Faccini from c.1601. Charity of a Saint by Mastelletta from c.1610. The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Sementi from the Marescalchi chapel here.

Lost art in the Medieval Museum
A window with the stemma of the Marescalchi family dated 1484. A c.11th century carved limestone panel (see right) used as a part of a wall and later, in the 15th century, as part of the tomb of Gemignano Inghirani here. The tombstone of Bernardino Zambeccari, made by Andrea da Fiesole in the first quarter of the 15th century, and that of Giacomo Guarini, from the same period. Also one for Paolo and Girolamo Scriba from the end of the 15th century. A Gradual, Proper and Common of Saints, a choir book of c.1285 by the Gerona Bible Master. This master, and his collaborators, being amongst the very best of the illuminators for which Bologna was renowned in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Campanili
The smaller one was completed in 1261. The main one, the work of Antonio di Vincenzo, was built in 1401 and is surrounded by decorative terracotta.

Opening times
Daily 6.30 - 12.00 and 3.00 - 7.00



 











An 18th-century print by Pio Panfili
 


 
San Giacomo Maggiore
Piazza Rossini
 


this church now has its own page

San Giorgio in Poggiale
Via Nazario Sauro

History

Legend suggests Lombard origins, but the current church dates to a rebuilding by architect Tommaso Martelli between 1589 and 1633. Occupied by Servites until 1798, suppressed by Napoleon, then in 1882 the church passed to the Jesuits who remained until the complex was severely damaged during bombing on the 25th of September 1943. Following deconsecration and stripping of all art works the church was nearly demolished between 1959 and 1962. The buildings were later acquired by the Cassa di Risparmio/Fondazione Carisbo and reopened in 2010 as a cultural centre housing a library (in what was the church) and newspaper and photo archives. 21st century artworks fill the chapels and apse.

Interior
Very scrubbed up and clean inside, with desks on a raised platform in the centre of the nave and bookshelves in the five shallow chapels each side. Some few fragments of decoration remain in a couple of the chapels, and in what was the presbytery too, which also has two statues and the church bell on a pile of books.

Part of the Genus Bononiae - Museums in the City cultural itinerary/walk.

Opening times

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 9.00 - 1.00
Tuesday 9.00-5.00

San Giovanni Battista dei Celestini
Piazza dei Celestini


History
The Celestine order came to Bologna in 1368 and built a monastery and church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. In 1535-1554 the church was rebuilt in its current form, 1560-1561 the convent was rebuilt and in 1580 the campanile was added. Further reconstruction Carlo Francesco Dotti and Francesco Tadolini during the 18th century. In 1797, the Celestines were suppressed by Napoleon, but the church continued as a parish church until 1987, with the Lateran Canons taking over in 1824.
The former convent has been used by various government and public offices - initially, in September 1798 it was used for the administration of the lottery, then as a registry office, the office for conscripts, and the archive of suppressed religious organisations.  It was rebuilt in the mid-19th century to house a school for engineers and since 2011 it has housed the Archivio di Stato.

Interior
Small and aisleless, but totally decorated. Four chapels each side, all marble clad and with painted altarpieces. Three shallow-effect trompe l'oeil dome scenes in the nave. Square Sanctuary/Apse frescoed in its dome with the Glorification of San Pier Celestino (the founder of the Celestine Order) by Giovanni Burrini 1656-1727 and with mock fresco balconies on the walls by Giovanni Battista Baldi.
Quite a plain chapel to the right, beyond the door to the sacristy. There's an organ gallery over the entrance and nun's galleries flanking the sanctuary. Over the high altar is a bland 1688 Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Luke and Peter Celestino by Marcantonio Franceschini.
Much ordinary 17th and 19th century art. The first altar on the left has Irene Removing the Arrows from Saint Sebastian by Mastellatta. The second chapel on the left has (a grown up) Tobias and the Angel by Gianbattista Bertusio (a pupil of Lodovico Carracci) from 1644, which was taken from the suppressed church of St Michele Angelo detta del Pontichello. The first on the right has a Noli Me Tangere by Lucio Massari.

Lost art
in the Pinacoteca

A Crucifix by Pietro da Bologna.
The Birth of John the Baptist
by Ludovico Carracci from 1604, from the high altar here, commissioned by Alessandra Ratta, a sister here.

Opening times
8.00-1200 & 3.00-8.00


An 18th-century engraving by Pio Panfili.

San Giovanni in Monte
Piazza San Giovanni in Monte

History

A round church is said to have been founded here by Saint Petronius in 433 and to have been called the Monte Oliveto. The first written record of the church dates from 1045. Around 1118 the Canons Regular of the Lateran moved here and they restored and enlarged the old church in 1286 and built the current, late Gothic church c.1450, with a 1474 facade in Renaissance style.
The Canons Regular were expelled by Napoleon who looted some of the art for removal to the Louvre. (See Lost art below).  In 1824 the floor was replaced, with the floor tombs moved to the walls. The church was badly damaged by bombing on the 29th of January 1944, with three of the north chapels destroyed and much damage to some others, the portico, and the vault. Restoration followed between 1947 and 1950.
In 1800 the 16th century convent was converted into a prison which it remained until 1984. It was also used as a headquarters and for interrogations by the SS - between 1943 and 1944 it was used to house Jewish prisoners before 'transfer'. From 1985 restoration work took place and since 1996 it has housed various university departments.

Façade
The façade, which looks very Venetian Renaissance, has a projecting porch of 1474, with Saint John the Evangelist’s eagle in painted terracotta by Niccolò dell’Arca c.1480 in the lunette above the door.

Interior
What seems to be the dominant Bologna style -  hexagonal brick pillars (four each side here) separating the nave from the aisles (tall and thin here), with brick arches and vaulting above (finished in 1603) and white walls. The octagonal dome was built in 1496. There are dark latish-looking (16th century?) fresco figures of saints, monks and popes on the west and east facing sides of the pillars and popes on the west and east facing sides of the pillars.
On the entrance wall, above the door, is Saint John on Patmos a stained-glass tondo designed by Francesco del Cossa early in his career. Ercole de’ Roberti and Lorenzo Costa are also said to have been responsible. To the left of the door is another window designed by Francesco del Cossa, also commissioned by the Gazzadini family, depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels.  Rebuilding in the 19th century left this one incomplete - a section showing a chalice between two angels, is now in the Pinacoteca in Ferrara.
There's an inverted Roman pillar  half way down the nave in the centre, topped by a small 8th-century Romanesque cross, with a wooden figure of Christ, from the 16th century, attributed to the brothers Gian Giacomo and Giovanni del Maino from Lombardy.
Note the unobvious light switches by the chapels. There are five short and one tall (before the transept) chapels on the left (one chapel space is replaced by doors) with six short and one tall on the right. The chapels are variously decorated.
The very decorated one second on the left has a Saint Francis from 1645 by Guercino. There is a 'studio of' Guercino in the fifth chapel on the right. The third has Saint Laurence being grilled in impressive perspective by Pietro Faccini from 1590.
But it is the seventh, taller, chapel on this side that has the highlight Lorenzo Costa, his 1497 Ghedini altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Augustine, Posidonius, John the Evangelist and Francis, with Two Angel Musicians, showing the Bellini-influence benefit of his recent trip with Francia to Venice. The frame is original. The instruments being played by the putti, in front of the rectangular framing of a landscape view, are important for musical historians for the identification of the form of early viols.
Behind the altar is a choir with 53 seats with intarsia work panels by Paolo Sacca, an artist from Cremona, made between 1518 and 1523. Over the choir hangs a 14th-century painted Crucifix by the Pseudo Jacopino di Francesco. On the back wall in a huge gilt frame flanked by trompe l'oeil figures, is the none-too-visible altarpiece of the  Coronation of the Virgin of 1501 by Lorenzo Costa.
The north transept was built in 1514 to designs by Arduino Arriguzzi for the blessed Elena Duglioli Dall’Oglio (1472–1520), who is buried here. Known to have vowed to remain a virgin after marriage, like Saint Cecilia, she was given a relic of the saint by Cardinal Alidosi, the hated acolyte of Pope Julius II. The gilded angels behind her sarcophagus were made by the workshop of Francia to a design by Raphael, Elena also having commissioned from Raphael the famous Saint Cecilia in Ecstasy altarpiece for this chapel (see below) which is now in the Pinacoteca, having been replaced here by a poor copy by Francesco Alberi in 1861, but the original frame by Formigine remains.
In the chapel left of the sanctuary there is a 19th-century enamelled ceramic relief by the local Minghetti workshop.
In a chapel in the south transept is a tondo of the Madonna della Sanità, frescoed by Giovanni da Modena in the early 15th century and now set into a much later and soppier-looking painting.

Lost art
A small Cima da Conegliano Virgin and Child (c.1495) from the small sacristy here.
The Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints John the Evangelist, Apollonia, Catherine of Alexandria and Michael by Perugino (c.1500)
The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia (1513/17) by Raphael mentioned above (see right) has Saint Cecilia is flanked by Saints Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine and Mary Magdalene. An anachronistic crowd of saints that have been the subject of fluctuating opinion as the mixing of saints from different times has suffered from changing fashions. The story goes that Raphael entrusted Francia with the delivery of this altarpiece from Rome, and that when Francia unwrapped it he was so gobsmacked he decided to give up painting. But this may just be an invention on Vasari's part, especially as Francia also died in 1517. Vasari also tells us that Giovanni da Udine, an otherwise unspecial artist, added the unusually  impressive still-life of broken instruments on the ground, to help out the then-busy Raphael. The elaborate wooden frame was long thought to have been made in Bologna by Andrea da Formigine but recent scholarship (admittedly based on Vasari's account) has it designed by Raphael and made by Antonio Badile.
All the three above are now in the Pinacoteca.
As is a panel depicting the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Two Angels (1493) by the Maestro di Ambrogio Saraceno.

A Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Petronius and Eleutropius, painted by Niccolò Pisano for the chapel of Annibale Gozzadini here is now in a private collection (see below). A very precise contract, dated 14th April 1534, exists. It's almost obsessive attention to detail seems even more excessive as the same painter had already painted a altarpiece of the same subject for the same patron in the church of San Donnino eight years before, to which it bears no little resemblance, with the Virgin and Child seemingly taken from the same cartoon.
The huge Virgin of the Rosary (1617-21) commissioned by the Ratta family from Domenichino, taken by Napoleon but returned in 1815 to the Pinacoteca. Carlo Cesare Malvasia once published a letter written by the artist in reply to one from Francesco Albani asking him what the subject of this puzzling painting was, in which Domenichino replied that he couldn't remember. Preparatory drawings are in the Louvre and Windsor Castle.
Until 1752 the altarpiece by Lorenzo Costa at the back of the sanctuary had earlier-painted predella panels by Ercole de' Roberti. These included The Road to Golgotha and The Betrayal of Jesus now in Dresden (cleaned in 2018/19) and The Deposition in the Walker in Liverpool. In 1695 the predella was placed in the small sacristy. The panels now in Dresden were taken from the church c. 1750 by Luigi Crespi, Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore, for Augustus III, Elector of Saxony.
Guercino's Saint Joseph and the Christ Child of 1637/8 was one of a pair of panels that hung in the Ferri Chapel here. It is now in the National Gallery in Dublin. Its pendant is lost.
A late-15th-century illuminated Psalter, on display in the Medieval Museum.

Campanile
Over 40m high, it was finished in the 14th century, its base dating back to the 13th.

Opening times
Daily 7.30 - 12.00 & 4.00 - 7.00


An 18th-century print by Pio Panfili.
 



 


 






San Girolamo della Certosa
Via della Certosa


History

The monastery was built and named for the Carthusians who settled here in 1333, the first stone being laid on 17th April 1334, and the church consecrated on 2nd June 1359. Little of this medieval church remains. There was much post-Council of Trent rebuilding work in the 1560s and 70s, adding the transept and chapels, during which Bartolomeo Cesi decorated the sanctuary. The entrance porch connecting church and convent was enlarged in 1768 by Gian Giacomo Dotti. The monastery was suppressed by Napoleon in 1797 and became the core of a public cemetery in 1801.

Interior

Has an unusual inverted T-shaped plan, which means the transept is as you enter, with an altar at each end. A sequence of three chapels progresses eastward like a corridor from the left-hand transept. Then soon there are iron railings and the inlaid wooden choir stalls, by Biagio de' Marchi from 1539, after a fire, probably to designs replicating original stalls of 1538.
Over the high altar in the very golden presbytery is a tall Crucifixion with, to the left, The Agony in the Garden, and to the right The Deposition, all by Bartolomeo Cesi. There's a Vision of Saint Bruno by him over the altar in the right hand transept too.
Other chapels contain Christ Carrying the Cross by Ludovico Carracci (which I couldn't find), The Entry into Jerusalem by Lorenzo Pasinelli, The Ascension by Bibiena in the right hand transept and Jesus Driving the Merchants from the Temple in the nave by Francesco Gessi. The Supper of Christ in the House of the Pharissee is a major work, signed and dated 1652, by Giovanni Andrea Sirani, Elisabetta's father. I also somehow missed Elisabetta's Baptism of Christ of 1658 (see below) - her largest work, with 36 life-sized figures, and her first major public commission in Bologna, at the age of 19 - and her small Saint Bruno of 1657.

Campanile
Built 1611 by the architect Tommaso Martelli to replace the original small belfry of the 14th century.

Lost art in the Pinacoteca
Antonio and Bartolomeo Vivarini's spectacular still-intact polyptych (see right), the Certosa Polyptych, was painted in Venice and signed by both and dated 1450. Centred on The Virgin Crowned by Angels, it was painted for the high altar here,
commissioned by Pope Nicholas V in memory of Niccolò Albergati, the Bishop of Bologna who was famously painted by Jan van Eyck. Jesus is asleep in the Virgin's lap prefiguring the Pieta. Above is an Ecce Homo. The standing saints in the main register are Mark (or the Blessed Lorenzo Giustiniani), Jerome, John the Baptist and Nicholas. The half-length saints above are Peter, Gregory the Great, Petronius (?) and Paul. The pinnacles are surmounted by figures of six prophets with scrolls giving their names and four angels, with a carved God the Father in the centre.  Along with The Communion of Saint Jerome of 1591/2 by Agostino Carracci, and The Vision of Saint Bruno of 1647 by Guercino, all three works were looted from the chapels here by Napoleon, and later returned to the Pinacoteca.
San Bernardino di Siena
by Amico Aspertini. 
A 1595 Flagellation and a 1600 Crowning with Thorns by Ludovico Carracci along with his Preaching of Saint John the Baptist from 1592 - an uncommon subject for an altarpiece. The bustling Last Communion of Saint Jerome by Agostino Carracci 1591-97 was an original and very influential treatment of the subject.

Opening times
Daily summer 8.00 - 12.00 & 2.30 - 5.45

winter 8.00 - 12.00 & 2.30 & 4.45

 

The monastery cloisters and grounds became the city cemetery in 1801.
La Certosa Historic Monumental Cemetery
Now has its own page here, mostly of photographs. Click the link above to visit.


 











San Giuliano
 Via Santo Stefano

History
A parish church has been on this site since the 12th century, but the current church and bell-tower date to a rebuilding of  1778-1781 to designs by Angelo Venturoli. In the fifteenth century it was occupied by Vallombrosian monks from Castiglione dei Pepoli and was suppressed in 1798.

Interior
The stucco work inside is by G. Rossi and A. Moghini. The statues of the Evangelists and Prophets (1781) are by Ubaldo Gandolfi. The late 19th-century frescoes on the ceiling and apse are by Alessandro Guardassoni and Luigi Samoggia. The rectory has a fresco depicting the life of the Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (c. 1610) by Alessandro Tiarini, a pupik of Prospero Fontana and Guido Reni.

Campanile
Also dating to 1781 and the work of Venturoli.

Opening times

Weekdays 11.00 - 1200 and 5.00 - 7.00
Sundays & holidays 10.00 - 12.00







A postcard from c.1910/20
 

 

San Giuseppe Sposo
Via Bellinzona 6

History
Originally a Cluniac monastery of 1254 with the church dedicated to Santa Maria Maddalena in Valdipietra. The monastery later passed to  Augustinian and then Dominican nuns, and in 1566 to the Servites, who renamed the church San Giuseppe. Suppressed in 1810, but in 1818 the Capuchin order took over the monastery and undertook rebuilding of the church from 1841-44, by Filippo Antolini. In 1865/6, the Kingdom of Italy requisitioned the complex for use as stables, but in 1873 the church was reconsecrated, and the monastery returned to use in 1892.  Serious damage from bombing to the convent during the Second World War, including the destruction of its large library. Made a parish church in 1959.

Interior

Small plain and aisleless with dishwater-colour walls. Three chapels each side, with confessionals in what would have been the corridors between. Wooden altarpiece surrounds, including the high altar. Much 19th-century art. A polychrome terracotta Pietà with Saint Francis from 1727 by Angelo Piò is in the first chapel on the right, a Crucifixion by Prospero Fontana from 1580 is in the choir

The convent
Houses a cinema and the Museo Provinciale dei Minori Cappuccini, which has much art from the Capuchin order convents of the Emilia-Romagna region, including works by Marco Zoppo, Bartolomeo Cesi, Lavinia Fontana, and Luigi Crespi, but is currently closed.


Lost art
The Dream of Saint Joseph, The Birth of Christ, and The Flight into Egypt, the predella by Girolamo Marchesi (Il Cotignola) of the high altarpiece here from 1522/24, which also includes the main panel of The Marriage of the Virgin, is in the Pinacoteca.

Opening times
Monday-Saturday 6:30 -12:00 & 3:00 - 7:00
Sunday and holidays 6:30 - 12:00 & 4:00 - 7:00

San Luca
The Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca


History

The Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca is sited on a hill south-west of the city. Tradition states that it was built on the site of small 12th century hermitage chapel tended by two holy women, Azzolina and Beatrice Guezi, to house a miracle-working icon of the Black Madonna and Child (see below) (now covered with a 17th-century silver revetment) which was brought, legend states, from the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople by Theocles a pilgrim in the 12th century, after the crusades, who had been commanded to take it by the Virgin in a vision. As is not unusual with such images legend has it that it was painted by Saint Luke himself.
Construction work began in 1194. In 1294 Dominican monks, from the monastery of Ronzano, took over the site, rebuilding from 1433-81 in  a Renaissance style, and the order remained here until the Napoleonic suppression of 1799. The present church was built in 1723 - 1757 to designs by Carlo Francesco Dotti, who was also remodelling the interior of San Domenico at the same time. The lateral external tribunes were built by Carlo Francesco's son, Giovanni Giacomo, in 1774 using his father's plans. Some damage during WWII.

Interior
The centrally-planned interior is curvy - all stucco and gilt with a pair of lateral large central chapels and four smaller ones in the corners. Looming and domey. Dark marble and decoration is dominant in the presbytery. The central cupola fresco is early 20th century by Giuseppe Cassioli.
The famed Byzantine Virgin & Child (see right) is kept behind glass and a considerable 17th-century worked revetment, in a raised cherub-filled chapel behind the altar. The icon, a painting on linen mounted on a board,  is said to have been made between the 9th and 11th centuries, was acquired during the crusades and was retouched by a local artist.

The early and odd Apparition of the Virgin and Child to Saint Dominic with The Mysteries of the Rosary at the base (also known as The Madonna of the Rosary see right) from 1597 by Guido Reni, an artist much-employed by the Dominicans, is in the last chapel on the right.
Ordinary 18th-century art dominates. Donato Creti's 1745 Coronation of the Virgin is in the second chapel on right and a 1746 Virgin and Child with Saints by him is in the second on the right.
There is work by Giuseppe Maria Mazza in the chapel of Saint Anthony of Padua, Vittorio Bigari (frescoes) and Guercino's Apparition of Christ to the Virgin in the sacristy. Also works by Domenico Pestrini, stucco work by A. Borelli and G. Calegari and statues, including a Crucifix, by Angelo Piò.


Opening times
Monday to Saturday:
7.00 – 6.00 November to February
7.00 - 7 .00 March to October
Weekdays the Sanctuary is closed
from 12.30 to 2.30
Sundays and Public Holidays:
7.00– 6.00 November to February
7.00 - 7 .00 March to October






 


A print of 1857 
 


The Portico di San Luca
begins by Porta Saragozza

The church can be approached along this covered arcade of 666 arches, which was begun in 1674, to protect the Byzantine icon during its annual procession up the hill from the Duomo, which has taken place during Ascension week since 1433, when the ritual was invented by jurist Graziolo Accarisi, who was also probably responsible for the legend of the pilgrim Theocles. The icon had been long forgotten on the altar and, it is said, surrounded by mouse droppings, but the city was suffering from excessive rainfall and needed help. On its procession the sun came and and the reflection from the icon was dazzling. The sun stayed out and so the ritual was repeated.
The arches originally housed icons or chapels erected by patron families. Work began in 1674 with the building of the Bonaccorsi archway by G. G. Monti over Porta Saragozza. Monti also designed the  portico at the foot of the hill. Dotti, the architect of the church took over in the 1720s.
The walk is long and the penitential element persists.

 

 

San Martino
Via Oberdan

History
The Carmelites were the last of the big five mendicant orders to establish themselves in Bologna. They came to the city in 1288 and made this church, San Martino dell'Aposa, their home in 1293. More building in the first half of the 14th century, with the brick vaulted ceiling added in 1457 and a new façade at the end of the 15th century which was itself gothicly reshaped in 1879. The painter Lippo di Dalmasio is said to be buried in the cloister here.

In the lunette above the south door is a bas-relief of St Martin Giving Half his Robe to a Beggar (1531) by Francesco Manzini. The doorway also features bucrania (cow skulls).

Interior
Pretty darn gothic - a nave and two aisles with pointed brick arches and  cross-vault ribs against buff plaster - very typical of Bologna. There are six bays each side of the nave, mostly shallow chapels but with three deep ones at the back, the fourth of these bays (the second on the right) being taken up by the side door.
There is some fine art in the chapels down the left side. The first chapel, built in 1506, is the highlight space. It has a Raphaelesque Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Roch, ?, ? and Sebastian by Francesco Francia (see right)  who also painted the small Dead Christ Supported by Angels in the pediment of the altarpiece and the predella panel of  Christ Carrying the Cross. The later grisaille altar frontal of The Deposition is attributed to Amico Aspertini.
On the right wall in here are 1437 fresco fragments of an Adoration of the Magi by Paolo Uccello. They were discovered during restoration work in the sacristy in 1978-79, having been largely destroyed during rebuilding. The statue of the Virgin and Child against the left wall is a rare work in terracotta by Jacopo della Quercia and came here from Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.

The second chapel has a Saint Francis attributed to Guercino. The third has a Crucifixion with Three Saints panel by Bartolomeo Cesi. The fourth's altarpiece is a Saint Jerome of 1591 by Ludovico Carracci, the fifth's an Assumption by Lorenzo Costa 1506. On the aisle wall next is a (gilt-framed) 14th century fresco of the Virgin and Child by Simone dei Crocifissi, Lippo di Dalmasio's uncle and probable teacher. The left wall ends with a mass of early14th century fresco fragments (see right) said to be the earliest known works by Vitale da Bologna, with some by Simone de' Crocefissi, surviving from the original church. They show various standing figures, Abraham Welcomes the Blessed, The Apostles at the Last Supper, and The Damned.
The door at the end here leads to the baroque sacristy (see below) which is dominated by heavily-gilt white stucco and dark wooden cupboards, but has a small God the Father over the altarpiece by Guido Reni, and access to a sweet cloister.
The Sacristy is opened on Saturday mornings from 9.30 to 12.00 by volunteers from the Touring Club of Italy.



The chapel to the left of the sanctuary has a triptych of The Crucifixion and Saints Biagio and Christopher, with an Annunciation in oculi and a predella of Scenes from the Lives of Saints Biagio and Sebastian, dated 1469 (c.1480?) by an unknown Bolognese master. It was restored in 2002. The extravagantly-framed high altarpiece on the back wall of the sanctuary's square apse is The Virgin Enthroned with Six Saints and Donor Matteo Malvezzi is by Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta of 1548. The frame is by Andrea da Formigine from 1554, and adds a further six saints, two prophets in the spandrels and four angels. None of these figures can easily be identified.
Coming back up the right side, the chapel to the right of the presbytery is a marble riot, and the altar against the wall to the right has a Virgin and Child with Saints Lucy, Nicolas of Bari, and Augustine (Gregory the Great?) of 1510 by Amico Aspertini showing the scene of the three girls receiving their dowries from Saint Nicholas of Bari, thereby being saved from being sold into prostitution by their father.
On the aisle wall between this and the 4th chapel is a fresco fragment of the head of Christ from a Crucifixion by Vitale da Bologna. Lippo di Dalmasio painted the framed Virgin and Child fresco fragment on the left wall of the fifth bay and frescoed Saints Anthony and Onofrius (in roundels) and Elias (full length) on the column between the 3rd and 4th bays.
The first right-hand chapel has an Adoration of the Magi of 1532 by Girolamo da Carpi from Ferrara. Everyone seems pretty relaxed, from the lounging Virgin to the magi dressed like shepherds, sitting on the ground, with their giveaway exotic hats in front of them. The frame is topped by an inscription giving the date 1532 in Roman numerals, and on the bases of the frame's flanking columns are the arms of the Boncompagni, identifying the patrons.

Lost art
A panel of The Crucifixion by Dalmasio di Jacopo now in the Pinacoteca.
The final work of Michele di Matteo, a signed and dated polyptych of 1469, commissioned for the Ringhieri family altar here - six panels remain and are in the Pinacoteca. The Martyrdom of Saint Eugenia by Giovan Giacomo Sementi of c.1612/13 from the sacristy here.
The 14th century tomb of Carlo, Roberto and Riccardo da Saliceto, damaged in an earthquake in 1504, is in the Medieval Museum. As are some earlier figural corbels, from another tomb here, it is thought. Also the unusual and impressive Renaissance tomb of law lecturer Pietro Canonici by the Paduan sculptor Antonio Minelli.
Two by Ludovico Carracci from 1613 now in the Pinacoteca: The Martyrdom of Saint Peter Toma (with the Bologna skyline in the background) and its pendant Angel Attending the Meeting Between Saints Francis and Domenic taken from the sacristy here.

Campanile
Damaged during WWII.

The Cloister
The Chiostro dei Morti is arcaded on four sides and was built in 1511 based to a design by Giovanni da Brensa .

The church in art
The Gardens of the Convent of San Martino Maggiore (1861) (see right) by Luigi Bertelli

Opening times
Monday to Saturday 8.00am - 12.00pm and 4.00pm - 7.00pm
Sunday and holidays 9.00am -12.00pm and 4.00pm - 7.00pm


An 18th-century print by Pio Panfili.
 






 





 

San Mattia
Via Sant'Isaia


History
Nuns from an earlier church and convent of San Mattia (Saint Matthias), just outside the Porta Saragozza, had to move when it was destroyed in 1537 in the battles between Bologna and the Visconti. Later they built a new convent here. The convent's new church was built from 1575 by Pietro Fiorini to plans by Antonio Morandi, known as Il Terribilia, and consecrated in 1588. As the nuns were guardians of its home church the famous icon of the Virgin from San Luca would spend two days here each year during its annual procession.
The church was rebuilt in the 18th century, with more attention to the (reportedly 'magnificent') decoration than the building
, by the quadraturist Pietro Scandellari and Nicola Bertuzzi.

The convent was suppressed by the French in 1799 after the French and passed into private ownership. The convent buildings became a school in the 1830s, which they remain. The church was deconsecrated and used as a military warehouse and then a garage until the end of the 1970s, when it and some of the monastery buildings were sold to the Sovrintendenza per i beni architettonici dell'Emilia Romagna. They restored it from 1981 onwards and used it for cultural events. Since 2015 it has housed the Polo Museale dell'Emilia Romagna.

Interior
Aisless nave with eight side chapels and a slightly elevated and shallow apse.  Once had works by Guido Reni, Tintoretto, Innocenzo da Imola and others.

Lost art
The high altarpiece painted for this church signed and dated 1534 by Innocenzo da Imola had predella panels depicting scenes from the Life of Christ, including the Nativity, the Presentation and Christ Among the Doctors. These three, all of which oddly also include two saints, are amongst the three of the panels that are in private collections in Bologna, with the fourth in the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. This last one shows the Decapitation of Saint Catherine. The main register had panels of, from left to right, Saints Dominic, Matthias, Paul, John the Evangelist and Jerome. There was originally a figure of Saint Peter next to Matthias but it was painted out in the 19th century, probably because it was too damaged. A fragment of the central Virgin and Child is now in a private collection.
The Vision of Saint Hyacinth by Guido Reni from 1598/99 was painted for the family chapel of Sister Livia Garisendi here. Also mentioned in the contract between Reni and his patrons is Diodata Malvasia, then the prioress here and an ancestor of Reni's biographer Carlo Malvasia. This contract was discovered on the verso of a preparatory drawing, now in Stockholm, which is all that remains of this altarpiece, it having disappeared, presumably around 1863 when the church was deconsecrated.


Opening times
 For exhibitions or conferences only.
 

San Michele in Bosco
Piazzale San Michele in Bosco


History
Tradition has a monastery built here as early as the 4th century, but there was definitely one here by 1114. In 1364 Olivetans settled here. Following the destruction of the church in 1430, it was rebuilt 1517-1523, maybe to designs by Biagio Rossetti. Gaspare Nadi contributed to the work.
The complex was suppressed by Napoleon and later used as a barracks, a prison for those sentenced to life imprisonment and accommodation for the Papal legate and then for the King of Italy. The Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute was established here in 1880, by the surgeon Francesco Rizzoli, and remains.

The church
Renaissance-style façade designed by Biagio Rossetti from Ferrara, with a Istrian stone doorway by Baldassarre Peruzzi  from Siena (1522)

Interior
An aisleless nave with four side chapels, of very varying depth - three shallow with gilding (one with some frescoing and two with panels) and one very deep with a trompe l'oeil ceiling of architecture and scene of ? Frescoes of Stories of Saint Michael by Carlo Cigagni from 1665 are on the lower level of the church walls, with stories of the same subject by Canuti on a higher level. A long raised presbytery with some high-on-the-wall uncovered fresco fragments (see below right). The dome and a half over the apse are also frescoed. The art is from the 16th and 17th centuries mostly. Around the altar are frescoes by Innocenzo da Imola from 1447, and a Virgin and Child with Saints Michael, Peter and Benedict. Also the 1435 tomb of Antonio da Budrio by Jacopo della Quercia. A highlight space is the sacristy (see far below right) which has the best-preserved fresco work of Girolamo di Carpi of 1526, including the Transfiguration on the end wall.

The monastery
The octagonal cloister designed by Pietro Fiorini has damaged frescoes of 1605-10 from a cycle depicting Stories from the Lives of Saint Benedict, Cecilia and Valerian by the  Carracci, Guido Reni, Lucio Massari and Alessandro Tiarini (a pupil of Reni's), mostly now lost.
The refectory of 1445 has a Jesus at the House of Martha and Mary by Vasari and the library has frescoes by Domenico Canuti.
There's also a library built in 1517, with frescoes by Amico Aspertini.

Lost art in the Pinacoteca
Three panels by Jacopo di Paolo from c.1400/1410, consisting of The Crucifixion
with flanking panels of Saints James, Michael, Peter and John the Baptist, and The Annunciation in the pinnacles above the pairs of saints.
A big Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints Michael, Peter and Benedict (1517/1522) by Innocenzo da Imola, from the high altar here. A detached fresco panel of Christ and the Pharisees (c.1553) by Pellegrino Tibaldi.
Three panels were painted by Giorgio Vasari for the refectory here in 1540 - Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and the congested Supper of Saint Gregory the Great, are in the Pinacoteca; the third is lost, but presumably carried on the hospitality theme. Saint Gregory in the second-mentioned panel is a portrait of Pope Clement VII, with Duke Alessandro de' Medici, Vasari's great patron, is portrayed leaning against his chair.
The Virgin and Child with Five Female Saints of 1601 by Lavinia Fontana was painted for this church. It is said that Saint Barbara is a self-portrait. She does resemble self-portraits of Lavinia and she looks out at us, as subtle self-portraits inserted by painters frequently do. And she looks much younger than she was when she painted this work - around the age of 50. 
An early-16th-century illuminated gradual and antiphonary, on display in the Medieval Museum.

The famous view
In 2010 work on the park resulted in the removal of vegetation blocking the view from the belvedere, which had so impressed Stendhal in 1817.





Opening times
Daily 8.00 - 12.00 and 4.00 - 6.00

Part of the Genus Bononiae - Museums in the City cultural itinerary/walk.








 

San Nicolò degli Albari
Via Oberdan
 

History
Completely rebuilt c.1680 by Nicola Barelli, with internal restoration work in the 19th century. Has an early work by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, a Temptation of Saint Anthony of c.1690.


Lost art
Maestro di San Nicolò degli Albari, Storie di Cristo e Santi, c.1320 in the Pinacoteca.

Opening times
The times given are
Daily 8.15 - 12.00 &  3.00 - 9.00
but they seem to bear no relation to reality
 




San Paolo in Monte
Via dell'Osservanza


History
Also known as the Convento dell'Osservanza, built by Observant Franciscans in 1403, on a site said to have had some spiritual history. Demolished to make way for, and provide bricks for, the Villa Aldini, built down the road by Aldini, a lackey of Napoleon. This church completely rebuilt for the Franciscans in 1828 by Vincenzo Vannini in neoclassical style.

Interior
Clean, white, and almost Palladian, with rows of stout Doric columns lining the nave.
On the apse wall behind the altar is The Conversion of Saint Paul by Carlo Bononi. Paintings include a Crucifixion with Mary and Joseph by Orazio di Jacopo (1425) and, over the door on the inner façade, the Holy Marco Fantuzzi by Elisabetta Sirani,  There's a polychrome statue of Saint Francis by Angelo Piò and a Madonna della Grazie given to the friars here by Saint Bernardino of Siena in the 15th century. Also works by Girolamo Gatti, Carlo Cignani,  Barbara Burrini ; sculptures by Filippo Scandellari.

In the monastery there are works by Filippo Pedrini, Antonio Beccadelli; sculptures by Gaetano Pignoni; in the sacristy paintings by Orazio Samacchini, Giovan Francesco Gessi, Nicola Bertuzzi, Luigi Crespi, Antonio Magnoni, in the refectory works by Luigi Tadolini,  Antonio and Luigi Crespi (the sons of Giuseppe), Jacopo Alessandro Calvi, Gaetano and Ubaldo Gandolfi, Giuseppe Varotti, and Giuseppe Pedretti - all 18th century artists. Also a small museum of ethnographic items collected by Franciscan missionaries.

Lost art
Panels from a 1471 altarpiece by Francesco del Cossa (see right) - the central Annunciation and a long predella of the Nativity are in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. Two small panels of Saints Clare and Catherine which formed the two ends of the predella, according to Longhi, are now in the Thyssen Collection in Madrid. The prominent snail crawling along the lower edge of the main Annunciation panel is there to reinforce the fact that we are looking at an image, not reality, and also to symbolise the virgin birth as snails reproduce asexually.

Opening times currently closed.
 

San Paolo Maggiore
Via Carbonesi

History
Built for the Counter Reformation order of the Barnabites between 1606 and 1611 to designs by Giovanni Ambrogio Magenta, a Barnabite himself, who had also worked on Santissimo Salvatore and the Duomo. The church was named Maggiore to distinguish it from two other churches called San Paolo in Bologna. The façade was added between 1634 and 1636 by Ercole Fichi who also made the terracotta statues of Filippo Neri and Carlo Borromeo. There are also marble statues of Saints Peter and Paul by Domenico Maria Mirandola.  The Barnabites were suppressed by Napoleon and the church became a parish church in 1819. Closed later, it was reconsecrated in 1878 and in 1959 it was returned to the Barnabites.

Interior
Three chapels, widely spaced, either side of a tall and aisleless nave, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling decorated with trompe l'oeil architectural frescoes by Antonio and Giuseppe Rolli (1695-1704) with scenes of Saint Paul at the Aeropagus in Athens. Giuseppi having had to complete the work after his brother Antonio died after falling from a scaffold. The cupola, apse, sacristy and the two chapels in the transept were frescoed by Pietro Farina and Giuseppe Antonio Caccioli.

Mostly 17th century art by the Carracci and their followers. The vault frescoes of the Life of Saint John the Baptist in the first left chapel (... of San Giovanni Battista) are by Ludovico Carracci. The altarpiece here of the Baptism of Christ is by Giacomo Cavedoni, one of Ludovico's assistants. Guercino's Saint Gregory the Great and the Souls in Purgatory of 1647 is over the right transept altar (the Capella del Suffragio). Giuseppe Maria Crespi (also known as Lo Spagnolo) and Ludovico Carracci's Paradise with the Invisible Conception of the Virgin of 1616, with a trombone-playing angel, is in the second chapel (...del Paradiso) on the right.
The vigorous baroque sculpture group of The Martyrdom of Saint Paul is one of the many marble works by Alessandro Algardi  (1641-7) on the high altar. It is said that the sculptor, who was Bolognese but had moved to Rome, took seven years to complete the work and sent it to Bologna by boat from Ostia, but that it was intercepted by pirates, who demanded a ransom. The altar's baldacchino is said to be based on designs by Borromini. There are seven hard-to-see panels around the apse choir over the dark carved stalls and a pair more on the side walls flanking the altar. A Lippo di Dalmasio Virgin and Child given by the Belvisi family in 1612 is also mentioned.

Opening times
Monday to Saturday 8.30 - 11.30 and 4.30 - 6.30
Sunday and holidays 8.30 - 1.00 and 4.30 - 7.00












An 18th century print.
San Petronio


this church now has its own page

 
San Procolo
Via D'Azeglio

History
Legend has a church here in the 4th century, but one was certainly built and dedicated to the martyred soldier Saint Proculus of Bologna, whose remains were brought here by Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Monte Cassino, by 1087. Proculus became one of Bologna's eight patron saints, and is not to be confused with the saint of the same name who was the first bishop of Verona. Major rebuilding of the church began at the end of the 14th century under one Bartolomeo Gillij,  a new façade being added in 1400. The Gothic tracery of the ceiling was added from 1383 to 1407. More rebuilding from 1535 to 1557, under Antonio Morandi (called Terribilia) who added the fifth bay of the church, the choir and the bell tower. More interior work began in 1744 under architect Carlo Francesco Dotti, including more work on the choir, which was halted by the church and adjacent monastery's suppression in 1796, it having been still under Benedictine rule when it was closed. In 1883 there was restoration by the architect Modonesi in an attempt to return the church to its pre-baroque simplicity. The early gothic style brick façade was added during this work. 

The monastery
The Benedictine complex included a hostel for pilgrims. In 1297 a hospital for abandoned children, run by nuns of the order of Santa Maria degli Angioli or degl' Innocenti, was created. Antonio Morandi (Terribilia) designed the oldest of the three cloisters. Another was built in 1577, designed by Domenico Tibaldi, with a third started in 1622, designed by Giulio della Torre, and restored in 1734 by Luigi Casoli. At the same time a statue of Saint Proculus was erected by Angelo Pio in this courtyard. Suppressed in 1797. From 1860 until 2003 the convent housed the Maternity and Infancy Hospital.  In the early 19th century, there was a hospice for esposti e bastardini (abandoned children and little bastards) here.


Interior
Wide and plain - a nave and two aisles with thick cruciform pillars, neoclassical in style, thanks do Dotti. There are four altars down the right side and four chapels on the left, all with spiky-topped ironwork fences. One contains a fresco of the Virgin and Child by Lippo di Dalmasio, formerly in the lunette over the door outside.
The second altar on the right has a striking Ecstasy of Saint Benedict by Bartolommeo Cesi c.1590. In the wide and more decorated sanctuary and choir apse
The high altar (1744-1745) was designed Alfonso Torreggiani with a tabernacle by Giacomo Molinari, silver-work by Bonaventura Gambari, and statues by Toselli. Here is a 4th-century Roman sarcophagus converted to a tomb in the 14th century for Saint Procolus, now with illuminated bones behind a window. The transformation also involved giving a clearly-pagan Cupid a halo. The choir was designed by Giulio Dalla Torre and Carlo Francesco Dotti, with Giuseppe Pedretti's 18th-century Martyrdom of Saint Proculus at the end. The engraved wooden choir stalls are by Andrea di Pietro Campana.
The chapels on the left side include a Saint Cyrus with the Virgin by the school of Carlo Cignani. In the chapel of the Holy Sacrament is a Last Supper by Ginevra Cantofoli, a student, and possibly assistant, of Elisabetta Sirani, who is said to have designed and retouched this work. Malvasia mentions a superior preparatory study by Sirani owned by Cantofili's heirs. The fresco decoration here is by Onofrio Zanotti.
The first chapel on the left has, since the 13th century, housed the relics of Proculus and Pozzuoli. It was refurbished in 1750 by Alfonso Torreggiani and Antonio Cartolari. Quadratura by Michele Mastellari. The main altarpiece is by Francesco l'Anges (born 1675).
In the refectory is a canvas of The Miracle of the Fishes (1607) by Lionello Spada, he being the artist famous for needing feeding on the job whilst frescoing and making little pyramids of the bones of the animals in his dinner, with a sign on top saying 'Funeral of the Death Feasts'. Another canvas here is by Alessandro Tiarini (1639-40) a pupil of Fontana.
Bulgaro and Martino (jurists and pupils of Irnerius who helped found Bologna university), were buried in the square in front of the church, in tombs removed probably in the late 14th century. Buried in the church were Bartolomeo Cesi, Alessandro Tiarini, Girolamo Pilotta, and Luigia Maria Rosa Alboni (painters); and Anna Morandi Manzolini (wax modeller); Nicolo Donati (architect); and Carlo Nessi (sculptor).


The mysterious inscription
A marble plaque on the façade of San Procolo has a Latin inscription which says If the bell of Procolo had been far from Procolo, Procolo would now be far from Procolo. A.D. 1393
One theory is that it refers to a bell ringer called Procolo who was crushed when a bell fell on him - if he had been far from the campanile of San Procolo he wouldn't now be in the cemetery here. Adding to the strangeness is the fact of a similar accident being told about the lost church of
San Procolo in Venice. Or it could be about a student who suffering from wakefulness and overwork, especially as the plaque was left by scholars from the School of Law.

Opening times
Monday to Friday: 6.30am - 11.00am

Saturday and Sunday: 9.30am - 12.00pm


















A cloister here in the early 20th century









 

San Rocco
Via Monaldo Calari

San Vittore
Via San Vittore

History
Built from 1506 against the city wall, to house an image of the Virgin which had been on the walls, just before the establishment of the Compagnia di Santa Maria della Pietà e di San Rocco. A portico was added by the end of the 16th century. The current church dates to enlargement in 1606, with a new porch and facade added in 1661. The oratory on the first floor was built in 1614 and decorated in 1626 with fresco panels by Lucio Massari, Giacomo Cavedoni, Francesco Gessi, Guercino, Paolo Carracci, brother of Ludovico, and Francesco Carracci, the nephew. They show the Saint's life in eleven scenes. The square panels in the illusionistic coffered ceiling, painted by Angelo Michele Colonna, Giovanni Gessi, Giacomo Cavedoni, Domenico Canuti, Lucio Massari and Luigi Valesio,  depict the Virtues, Bologna's patron saints, the doctors of the Church and the Evangelists. The company was suppressed on the 25th July 1798.

The church is now used by a Rumanian Orthodox congregation. (Monday-Friday 18.15 - 19.00 Saturday 17.00 - 19.00 Sunday 8.30 - 13.30.) The oratory is home to the Circolo della Musica and is used for concerts.

Opening times
By appointment.
 
  outskirts beyond san michele in bosco

History

Legend (and the poet Giosuè Carducci) claims that there has been a temple here since 441, but the Cenobio di San Vittore, named for Saint Victor the Moor, a 4th-century martyr from Milan (whose cult was another of those avidly promoted by Saint Ambrose) was founded in the 11th century by the Canons Regular of the Lateran. Consecration followed in 1178, by the bishop of Bologna, Giovanni IV. Minimal rebuilding - some in the 15th century. Suppressed by Napoleon in 1789. Soon after restored to its original use, including use by the Fathers of the Oratory of San Filippo Neri from 1833, until 1997. Having fallen into neglect the church was renovated in 1999 with the help of Wojciech Przeklasa. Concerts in the cloister in the summer.

Interior
An aisleless nave with a rare 12th or 13th century brick screen, with a central door and a colonnade above, restored in 1941 and featuring detached frescoes since 2000


Romanesque

15th-century frescoes in the nave
 a carved wooden choir from 1421-26

cloister, also built in the 12th century was restored at the end of the 15th

Sunday 9.30am - 11.30am (weekdays by appointment)


 


 

 

San Sigismondo
 Via San Sigismondo


History

Built 1271 as an oratory for the Malvezzi family. Rebuilt from 1725 by Carlo Francesco Dotti campanile added 1795 by Angelo Venturoli. Now the university church.

Interior
New altars by Giuseppe Jarmorini in 1792, and  trompe l'oeil vault decoration in 1870 depicting The Blessed Imelda Lambertini and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga by Napoleone Angiolini (figures) and Michele Mastellari (ornament).
18th-century paintings, including Saint Sigismund of Burgandy and His Family Adoring the Sacred Heart by Domenico Pedrini, and the Virgin and Child with Saints Anne, Joseph, Liborius and Paschal Baylón by Giuseppi and Luigi Crespi.
Against the right wall as you enter is a glass-sided tomb containing the Blessed Imelda Lambertini who entered a Dominican convent at the age of 9. She wanted to receive Holy Communion, but at that time the Church prohibited anyone under the age of 14 from doing so. On May 12th 1333, the Feast of the Ascension, while she prayed in church, a glowing host was seen by the other nuns suspended over her head and a priest was called. He took this as a sign and gave her communion. Immediately Imelda went into ecstasy and died that day, aged 11. She was beatified in 1826, despite the controversial nature of her 'miracle' and became the patroness of children taking first communion.

Opening times

weekdays: 7.00 - 19.00 (seasonal)
holidays: 17.00 - 19.00



Sant'Agostino
Via Barberia

Lost art
The Vision of Saint Augustine by Ercole Procaccini of c.1575 was the high altarpiece here.
The odd episode depicted, where the saint can't decide between the milk of Mary or the
blood of Christ, is derived from a text then thought to be Augustine but later found to be apocryphal.
 

Sant'Antonio Abate
Via Massimo D'Azeglio


History
Built 1328 and rebuilt in 1615 to designs by Floriano Ambrosini.

Art highlights
Crucifixion with the Women at the Bottom of the Cross from the early 1580s, by Prospero & Lavinia Fontana for the Jesuit church of Santa Lucia. Also from that church and now here is Lorenzo Sabbatini's Virgin and Child with Saints Agatha and Lucy.
Paintings by Denis Calvert, Bartolomeo Ramenghi (called il Bagnacavallo for the village where he was born) (a student of Francia and Costa) and an altarpiece by Fabio Fabbi of 1902.

Lost art
Four very fine and gilt-shiny panels from an altarpiece painted by Vitale da Bolgona for this church, of scenes from The Life of Saint Anthony, around 1340/45 (see left) are now in the Pinacoteca.










An 18th-century print
by Pio Panfili. To the left of the church is the Collegio Montalto









 

Sant'Apollonia di Mezzaratta
Via dell'Osservanza

History
A complex of unknown date here
included the church of Sant 'Apollonia and two small oratories, one of which called della Madonna del Dente, because of an image of the Virgin and Child with the same name (now in the local Museo DaVia Bargellini) signed in 1345 by Vitale da Bologna. Mezzaratta is a reference to the complex being half way up the hill.
In 1292 the complex passed to the Compagnia Caritativa del Buon Gesù, a confraternity set up to help pilgrims pilgrims and those condemned to death. It was this confraternity that commissioned the famous fresco decoration in the mid-14th and early-15th centuries from the likes of Vitale da Bologna and Simone dei Crocifissi. See Lost art below, some fragments remain. Some damage during WWII.

Lost art
The church's fresco decoration was controversially removed between 1949 and 1963 and now fills a room in the Pinacoteca which reproduces their positioning in the church. The scenes painted on the counter-façade by Vitale da Bologna in the early 1340s (see below) include The Annunciation, The Descent of Christ into Limbo, The Nativity, The Dream of the Virgin, and The Baptism of Christ. The other walls were frescoed later by others, including  Simone de' Crocifissi, with scenes from the Lives of Joseph and Moses and The Life of Christ. The underdrawings (sinopie) are also on display.


 

Sant'Isaia
Via Sant'Isaia


History
Legend has a church here in the 1st century, but it was first recorded in 1088. It was rebuilt from 1624 by Pietro Fiorini (work which included the portico on the street) and his son Sebastiano after his death, the work being completed in 1633. Enlarged in the early19th century by Luigi Marchesini, who reworked the façade, portico and interior, adding two side aisles and the dome and a major chapel. The church reopened on the 5th of July 1837.

Interior
A big church, six bays long with chunky rectangular pale pillars, with buff marble bases on streaky monochrome marble plinths - a not unusual combination in Bologna. All very tasteful with just a little, and dull, gilding. A pair of front-facing chapels terminate the aisles. A dome with blue coffers over the crossing, with a matching semidome in the apse. 18th century art in some chapels but they mostly contain more modern sculpture. A nice soft baroque Annunciation panel in the second chapel on the right. Good stained glass scenes in lunettes over the entrance and either side of the apse, the latter two of The Pieta and The Last Supper.

19th-century statues by A. Bertelli and paintings by O. Samacchini, B. Gennari, F. Pedrini, G. Varotti, MA Franceschini, A. Guardassoni. In the sacristy there is a fresco by Lippo di Dalmasio from the late 14th century and a terracotta Pietà by Angelo Piò (c.1730).



Opening times

Weekdays: 8.00 - 11.00 &  4.00 - 7.00
Holidays: 9.00 - 12.30

An 18th-century print by Pio Panfili.






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