San Petronio Basilica
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The Basilica of San Petronio is the main church of Bologna, the old art city in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. It dominates the Piazza Maggiore. It is the fifth greatest church in the world, stretching for 132 meters in length and 60 in width, while the vault reaches 45 meters.
It is dedicated to the patron saint of the city, Saint Petronius, who was bishop here in the fifth century. Following a council decree of 1388, the first stone of construction was laid June 7, 1390, when the town council entrusted Antonio di Vincenzo with raising a Gothic cathedral.
Works lasted for several centuries: after the completion of the first version of the facade, in 1393 the first pair of side chapels were begun. The series were completed only in 1479, however. In 1514 Arduino degli Arriguzzi proposed a revised plan in the form of a Latin cross with the intent to outdo even Saint Peter's Basilica of Rome, the greatest church of the Western Christian world (even in its ancient version). By tradition Pope Pius IV halted such a majestic project.
In spite of this setback the basilica continued to enjoy the great prestige it engendered from the very beginning: pope Clement VII chose it for the coronation of Charles V in 1530.
The vaulting and decoration of the central nave is by Girolamo Rainaldi, who completed it in 1646-1658.
Jacopo della Quercia of Siena enriched the facade with sculptures of the main doorway (illustrated, left) two new small flanking doorways, with subjects taken from the Old Testament, forming a traditional prelude to the new dispensation that is represented by the basilica itself. The heroic nudes of Adam and other figures in the rectangular bas-relief panels were an inspiration to artists of the Renaissance. The facing of the main facade, however, remains unfinished: many architects (notably Baldassarre Peruzzi, Vignola, Andrea Palladio and Alberto Alberti) were commissioned to propose solutions for it, but a definitive one was never found.
The construction of the basilica was a project of the comune of Bologna, not of the bishops: the property was a symbol of communal power that was not transferred from the city to the diocese until 1929; the basilica was finally consecrated in 1954. It has been the seat of the relics of Bologna's patron saint only since 2000; until then they were preserved in the Santo Stefano church of Bologna.
The interior is notable for a Madonna with Saints by Lorenzo Costa the Younger and a Pietà by Amico Aspertini. Also the colours of the walls and the stained glass windows are noteworthy. The choir was made in 14th century by Agostino de' Marchi, while the ciborium is a work by Vignola.
The church hosts also a sundial in the form of a meridian line inlaid in the paving of the left aisle in 1655; it was calculated and designed by the famous astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who was teaching astronomy at the University: at 66.8 meters it is the longest sundial in the world, following measurements that were for the time uniquely precise; Cassini and Domenico Guglielmini published an illustrated account of how the meridian was accomplished in 1695.[1]
Elisa Bonaparte, Napoleone Bonaparte's sister, is buried here.
In 2006, plans by Muslim terrorists to destroy the Basilica were thwarted by Italian police. The terrorists claimed that a 15th-century fresco inside depicting the Prophet Mohammed in Hell being devoured by demons is insulting to Islam [2]
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