Church sights in Italy
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Basilica di San Marco
Creating Venice's signature architectural wonder took nearly 800 years of painstaking labour and one saintly barrel of lard. Legend has it that in AD 828, wily Venetian merchants smuggled St Mark's corpse out of Egypt in a barrel of pork fat to avoid inspection by Muslim customs authorities. Church authorities in Rome took a dim view of Venice's tendency to glorify itself and God in the same breath, but Venice defiantly created the basilica in its own cosmopolitan image, with Byzantine onion-bulb domes, a Greek cross layout, a Gothic rosette window and Egyptian marble walls. The roped-off circuit of the church is free and takes about 15 minutes. For entry, dress modestly…
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Chiesa del Gesù
An imposing, much-copied example of late-16th-century Counter-Reformation architecture, this is Rome's most important Jesuit church. The facade by Giacomo della Porta is impressive, but it's the awesome gold and marble interior that is the real attraction. Of the art on display, the most astounding work is the Trionfo del Nome di Gesù (Triumph of the Name of Jesus), the swirling, hypnotic vault fresco by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (aka Il Baciccia), who also painted the cupola frescoes and designed the stucco decoration.
Baroque master Andrea Pozzo designed the Cappella di Sant'Ignazio in the northern transept. Here you'll find the tomb of Ignatius Loyola, the Spanish…
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Chiesa di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
Built on the site of an ancient temple to Minerva, the Dominican Chiesa di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is Rome’s only Gothic church, although little remains of the original 13th-century design.
Inside, in the Cappella Carafa (also called the Cappella della Annunciazione), you’ll find two superb 15th-century frescoes by Filippino Lippi and the majestic tomb of Pope Paul IV. Left of the high altar is one of Michelangelo’s lesser-known sculptures, Cristo Risorto (Christ Bearing the Cross; 1520). An altarpiece of the Madonna and Child in the second chapel in the northern transept is attributed to Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar and painter, who is also buried in the…
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Basilica di Santa Croce
When Lucy Honeychurch, the heroine of EM Forster's A Room With a View, is stranded in Santa Croce without a Baedeker, she first panics and then, looking around, wonders why it's thought to be such an important building. After all, doesn't it look just like a barn ('a black and white facade of surprising ugliness')?
On entering, many visitors to this massive Franciscan basilica share the same reaction. The austere interior can come as something of a shock after the magnificent neo-Gothic facade, which is enlivened by varying shades of coloured marble (both it and the campanile are 19th-century additions). The church itself was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio between 1294 and…
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Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis?
This pint-sized church marks the spot where St Peter, fleeing Rome, met a vision of Jesus going the other way. When Peter asked: ‘Domine, quo vadis?’ (‘Lord, where are you going?’), Jesus replied, ‘Venio Roman iterum crucifigi’ (‘I am coming to Rome to be crucified again’). Reluctantly deciding to join him, Peter tramped back into town where he was arrested and executed. In the aisle are copies of Christ’s footprints; the originals are in the Basilica di San Sebastiano.
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Chiesa di Santa Maria del Popolo
Next to the Porta del Popolo is one of Rome's earliest, richest Renaissance churches. The first chapel was built here in 1099 to exorcise the ghost of Nero, who was buried on this spot and whose ghost was said to haunt the area. It was overhauled in 1462, after which Pinturicchio painted his beautiful frescoes. In Raphael's Cappella Chigi (mostly completed by Bernini some 100 years later) you'll find a famous mosaic of a kneeling skeleton. Adding some fierce, exquisitely rendered drama to the Cappella Cerasi, to the left of the altar are two Caravaggio masterpieces: the Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter (both 1600–01).
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Chiesa di Sant’Agostino
This early Renaissance church is a favourite of soon-to-be mums, who pop in to pay their respects to Jacopo Sansovino’s sculpture of the Virgin Mary, the Madonna del Parto (1521). The Madonna also features in Caravaggio’s Madonna dei Pellegrini (Madonna of the Pilgrims), which caused uproar when it was unveiled in 1604, due to its depiction of Mary as barefoot and her two devoted pilgrims as filthy beggars. Painting almost a century before, Raphael provoked no such scandal with his fresco of Isaiah, visible on the third pilaster on the left in the nave.
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Chiesa di San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
It might not look it, with its filthy facade and unappealing location, but this tiny church is a masterpiece of Roman baroque. It was Borromini’s first church and bears all the hallmarks of his genius. The elegant curves of the facade, the play of convex and concave surfaces, the dome illuminated by hidden windows, all combine to transform a minuscule space into a light, airy interior.
The church, completed in 1641, stands at the road intersection known as the Quattro Fontane, after the late-16th-century fountains on its four corners, representing Fidelity, Strength and the Rivers Arno and Tiber.
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Basilica di San Clemente
This fascinating basilica provides a vivid glimpse into Rome's multilayered past: a 12th-century basilica built over a 4th-century church, which stands over a 2nd-century pagan temple and 1st-century Roman house. Beneath everything are foundations dating from the Roman Republic.
The medieval church features a marvellous 12th-century apse mosaic depicting the Trionfo della Croce (Triumph of the Cross) and some wonderful Renaissance frescoes in the Chapel of St Catherine, to the left of the entrance. Steps lead down to the 4th-century basilica inferiore, mostly destroyed by Norman invaders in 1084, but with some faded 11th-century frescoes illustrating the life of San…
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Chiesa di Sant’Andrea al Quirinale
It’s said that in his old age Bernini liked to come and enjoy the peace of this late-17th-century church, regarded by many as one of his greatest. Faced with severe space limitations, he managed to produce a sense of grandeur by designing an elliptical floor plan with a series of chapels opening onto the central area. The opulent interior, decorated with polychrome marble, stucco and gilding, was a favourite of Pope Alexander VII, who used it while in residence at the Palazzo del Quirinale.
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Chiesa di Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza
Hidden in the porticoed courtyard of Palazzo della Sapienza, this tiny church is a masterpiece of baroque architecture. Built by Francesco Borromini between 1642 and 1660, and based on an incredibly complex geometric plan, it combines alternating convex and concave walls with a circular interior topped by a twisted spire.
Palazzo della Sapienza, seat of Rome’s university until 1935 and now home to the Italian state archive, is often used to stage temporary exhibitions.
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La Pietà
Originally called Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione but fondly nicknamed La Pietà, this light-filled and harmonious church designed by Giorgio Massari is best known for its association with the composer Vivaldi, who was concertmaster here in the early 18th century. Though the current church was built after Vivaldi’s death, its acoustic-friendly oval shape honours his memory, and it is still regularly used as a concert hall. Be sure to look up: on the ceiling, Giambattista Tiepolo’s gravity-defying Coronation of the Virgin seems to open up the church to the vast heavens themselves.
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Collegiata
San Gimignano's Romanesque cathedral, officially titled the Duomo Collegiata o Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta but commonly known as the Collegiata (referring to the college of priests who originally managed it), has a bare facade that belies the remarkably vivid frescoes inside.
Parts of the building date back to the second half of the 11th century, but the frescoes, which resemble a vast medieval comic strip, date from the 14th century. Entry is via the side stairs and through a loggia that was originally covered and functioned as the baptistry.
Facing the altar, along the left (north) wall, are scenes from Genesis and the Old Testament by Bartolo di Fredi, dating from…
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Cattedrale di San Pietro di Castello
Unlikely though it may seem, this sleepy church on the far-flung island of San Pietro served as Venice’s cathedral from 1451 to 1807. Despite its glamour and central location, the Basilica di San Marco was ‘merely’ the doge’s chapel. The island of San Pietro (originally known as Olivolo) was among the first to be inhabited in Venice, and the original church here was the seat of a bishopric as early as 775. The present church is an almost-but-not-quite Palladio design. Palladio had been awarded the contract in the 1550s, but the death of the patriarch (Venice’s version of a bishop) led to a project hiatus that lasted beyond the genius’s own demise. Palladio’s successors…
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Chiesa dei SS Giovanni e Paolo
Who does brick Gothic best? When the Dominicans undertook the 100-year effort to build Zanipolo in 1333 to rival the Franciscans’ Chiesa diSanta MariaGloriosa dei Frari, the church stirred passions and partisanship more common to Serie A football than architecture. Both have red-brick facades with high-contrast detailing in white stone. But since Zanipolo’s facade remains unfinished, the Frari won a decisive early decision over Zanipolo with its soaring grace – and with Titian’s Assunta altarpiece front and centre, the Frari seemed impossible to surpass. Over the centuries, Zanipolo may have at least tied the score with the sheer scale and variety of its…
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I Frari
This soaring Italian-brick Gothic church features marquetry choir stalls, Canova's pyramid mausoleum, Bellini's achingly sweet Madonna with Child triptych in the sacristy, and Longhena's creepy Doge Pesaro funereal monument hoisted by burly slaves bursting from ragged clothes like Invisible Hulks – yet visitors are inevitably drawn to the small altarpiece.
This is Titian's 1518 Assumption, in which a radiant Madonna in a Titian-red cloak reaches heavenward, steps onto a cloud and escapes this mortal coil. Both inside and outside the painting, onlookers gasp and point out at the sight; Titian outdid himself here, upstaging his own 1526 Pesaro Altarpiece near the entry.…
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Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna
Designed and built by Jacopo Sansovino with a facade by Palladio – his first church commission – this enchanting Franciscan church is one of Venice’s most underappreciated attractions. The Madonna positively glows in Bellini’s 1507 Madonna and Saints in the Capella Santa, just off the flower-carpeted cloister courtyard, while swimming angels and strutting birds steal the scene in the delightful Virgin Enthroned, by Antonio da Negroponte c 1460–70.
Palladio and the Madonna are tough acts to follow, but father-son sculptors Pietro and Tullio Lombardo make their own mark with their 15th-century marble reliefs that recount the lives of Christ and an assortment of…
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Chiesa di San Zaccaria
When 15th-century Venetian girls preferred sailors to saints, they often had to do a penitential stint at the convent adjoining this remarkable church. A hotchpotch of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and baroque, it represents centuries of the wealth of disgruntled parents. Don't miss Bellini's melancholy Virgin or Tiepolo's version of the flight into Egypt via Venetian-style boat. For €1, you can also visit hidden chapels and the waterlogged, 10th-century foundations.
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Chiesa dei Gesuati
No matter the weather outside, the outlook is decidedly sunny inside this high baroque church designed by Giorgio Massari. Luminous afternoon skies surrounding St Dominic in Tiepolo’s 1737–39 ceiling frescoes are so convincing, you’ll wonder whether you’re wearing enough sunscreen. Striking a sombre note on the left side of the nave, Tintoretto’s 1565 Crucifixion shows Mary fainting with grief – but in 1730–33 Saints Peter and Thomas with Pope Pius V, Sebastiano Ricci’s chubby cherubs provide heavenly comic relief with celestial tumbling routines.
If you find the side door to the cloisters open, you might peek into the little-visited Chiesa di Santa Maria…
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Chiesa di Santa Maria Formosa
Rebuilt in 1492 by Mauro Codussi on the site of a 7th-century church, this house of worship bears a curious name (Shapely St Mary) that has spawned two local legends. One claims the church got its nickname because its address was confused with that of a local courtesan in a 16th-century guidebook. Alternately, you can choose to believe that the name comes via San Magno, Bishop of Oderzo, who had a vision of a particularly beautiful and formosa Virgin Mary on this spot. To match its rival legends, the cross-shaped church also has, oddly enough, two separate facades, one facing the canal and one facing the adjacent campo (square). With its generous baroque curves and serene…
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Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni
Venice's cosmopolitan nature is evident in Castello, where Turkish merchants, Armenian clerics and Balkan and Slavic labourers were considered essential to Venetian commerce and society. This 15th-century religious confraternity headquarters is dedicated to favourite Slavic saints George, Tryphone and Jerome of Dalmatia, whose lives are captured with precision and glowing, early-Renaissance grace by 15th-century master Vittore Carpaccio.
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Chiesa di San Giovanni Decollato
Heady rumours swirl like canal mists around this long-abandoned church named for San Zan Degolà, or St John the Headless, known rather less dramatically in English as St John the Baptist. On the south wall facing the campo is a sculpted medallion of a freshly severed head that presumably represents St John after his head was lopped off by Salome. But according to Venetian urban legend, this is an effigy of Biagio (aka Biasio) Cargnio, who had a butcher shop near here in the 16th century where the sausages contained a secret ingredient: children. When his recipe was discovered, he was promptly beheaded and quartered by the authorities, and his house and shop were…
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Chiesa di San Moisè
Icing flourishes of carved-stone ornament across the 1660s facade make this church appear positively lickable, although 19th-century architecture critic John Ruskin found its wedding-cake appearance indigestible. From an engineering perspective, Ruskin had a point: several statues had to be removed in the 19th century to prevent the facade from collapsing under their combined weight.
The remaining statuary by Flemish sculptor Heinrich Meyring (aka Merengo in Italian) includes scant devotional works but a sycophantic number of tributes to church patrons. Among the scene-stealing works inside are Tintoretto’s The Washing of the Feet, in the sanctuary to the left of the…
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Basilica di San Lorenzo
In 1425 Cosimo the Elder, who lived nearby, commissioned Brunelleschi to rebuild the basilica on this site, which dated to the 4th century. The new building would become the Medici parish church and mausoleum - many members of the family are buried here. Considered one of the most harmonious examples of Renaissance architecture, the basilica has never been finished - Michelangelo was commissioned to design the facade in 1518 but his design in white Carrara marble was never executed, hence the building's rough unfinished appearance.
In the austere interior, columns of pietra serena (soft grey stone) crowned with Corinthian capitals separate the nave from the two aisles.…
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Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore
Solar eclipses are only marginally more dazzling than Palladio's white Istrian marble facade. Begun in the 1560s, it owes more to ancient Roman temples than the bombastic baroque of Palladio's day. Inside, ceilings billow over a generous nave, with high windows distributing filtered sunshine and easy grace. Two of Tintoretto's masterworks flank the altar, and a lift whisks visitors up the 60m-high bell tower for stirring Ventian panoramas – a great alternative to long lines at San Marco's campanile.
Behind the church, a defunct naval academy has been converted into a shipshape gallery by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. After escaping the Dachau internment camp with his son…
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