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 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 Death 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. Michelangelo and Vasari both praised Ercole's frescoes, but the chapel was demolished during the Baroque remodelling of 1605.
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

 




Interior photographs courtesy of Tesori Abbandonati
 

San Barbaziano
via Cesare Battisti

History

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

 

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
 

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.

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








 

An 18th-century print by Pio Panfili
 

San Clemente
Via Collegio di Spagna

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

this church now has its own page

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 has been closed off  since the earthquake of 2014 did some damage. Update July 2018 It still is. 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
 

this church now has its own page

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.

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 chapels destroyed and much damage to some others, the portico, and the vault. Restoration 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.
 

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), signed by both and dated 1450, centred on The Virgin Crowned by Angels 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 Luca
The Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca

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.

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.

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

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

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 Paolo in Monte
Via dell'Osservanza

Opening times currently closed.
 

History

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









 

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.