Category: Italy

Los Angeles, 24 March 2024
Updated, Vienna, 27 September 2025

“Tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”, everything changes, everything is transformed. My wife intones this popular Italian saying, half jokingly, every time we come across something that has changed since we last passed this way. It seems to be happening more and more frequently now, I suppose a sign that we have clocked up decades of memories and experiences on which to draw on as we move inexorably towards the exit door (cue to my wife rolling her eyes at this latest meditation of mine on the transience of all life).

In any event, I was forcefully reminded of this saying a few weeks ago when an urban walk of ours led us past one of Milan’s earliest churches, the so-called paleochristian basilicas built before the fall of the western Roman Empire. I did what I exhort all my readers to do when a church hoves into view; I popped in to have a look around. Aïe! How much had changed since this church was first built in the 380s CE: “tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”. In a somewhat melancholy mood, I returned home and started researching the fate of Milan’s other paleochristian basilicas.

I need to give a bit of context here. Many people think that Rome was the only capital of the Roman Empire. This, as any Milanese will proudly tell you, is not so. In 286 CE, after the Roman Empire was carved into two, Milan became the capital of the western part and remained so for a little over 100 years, until 402 CE, when the capital was moved again, this time to Ravenna. There aren’t of course any pictures from that period, so I’ll throw in here a reconstruction of Milan (then known as Mediolanum) in about 300 CE.

Readers will make out the white rectangle of the forum, the circus along the edge of the city walls, to which was attached the imperial palace complex (so that the Emperor could step out into the Imperial box without leaving the palace grounds and mix with the hoi polloi), and the amphitheatre down to readers’ left. Just to get down among the hoi polloi, here’s another reconstruction of a typical day in the forum.

And in a rush of enthusiasm, I throw in another reconstruction of the hoi polloi doing their shopping along the cardo, the north-south street that passed through all fora in the Roman Empire.

The ghost of this particular street is still there, by the way. It is now called via Cantù. We see it here, looking in the same direction.

“Tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma.”

In any event, Mediolanum now being the capital city, it was here, in 313 CE, that the two Emperors, Constantine and Liceus, promulgated what has come to be called the edict of Milan, which allowed the free exercise of religion throughout the Empire. While the edict formally covered all religions, it was actually aimed primarily at Christianity. The result was that Christians could finally come out of the shadows and worship freely (we’ll skip over the fact that a mere seventy years later, in 380 CE, Christians imposed their religion on everyone else in the Empire, with all other religions being forced (back) into the shadows).

Among other things, the edict of Milan meant that Christians could finally stop meeting in secret in people’s houses and build their own places of worship. They were quick to take advantage of this new-found freedom. In Milan alone, and focusing just on the big churches, within a year of the promulgation of the edict the city had its first Christian basilica. In the photo below, we have a reconstruction, in the top right, of that first basilica, while the building at the bottom left, which had been a temple dedicated to the Goddess Minerva, was converted into another basilica, which some 30 years later was knocked down to make space for a much larger church.

By the time St. Ambrose became bishop of Milan in 374 CE, the city had added two more basilicas to the list. During his tenure, St. Ambrose ordered the construction of another four basilicas, I suppose to cater to all the newly-minted Christians now that Christianity had become the State religion. And not to be outdone by St. Ambrose, the imperial household decided to build their own basilica. So by 402 CE, the year that Milan stopped being the capital of the western Roman Empire, the city had another five basilicas on the rolls. The construction of basilicas went on even after Milan’s demotion as capital, with two more basilicas being built before the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE.

Of course, churches continued to be built in Milan in the centuries thereafter. But I want to focus on these eleven earliest, paleochristian, churches to show that indeed “all changes, all is transformed”.

Let me first give readers a framework for these tides of change. Any of us with the minutest interest in history will know that over the arc of history we humans have been repeatedly subjected to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. Here is Albrecht Dürer’s take on these four horsemen; I leave it to the readers to work out which horseman is which.

But buildings have also been subject to their own horsemen of the apocalypse. Two they share with us: War and Conquest, whole cities having been wiped out by both – and not just centuries ago. Here is a photo of Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped on it.

While here is a photo of Dresden after it was destroyed by more “traditional” ordnance.

A third has been Fire, a frequent companion of War and Conquest (Dresden is an eloquent memorial to that), but also a horseman that can strike alone. It, too, has wiped out whole cities. The Great Fire of London stands out in my mind, although many other cities have been laid low by fire.

Since my subject is churches, readers should note Old Saint Paul’s burning fiercely (and that is London Bridge that we see, although it is not “falling down, falling down”, as the nursery rhyme has it).

For religious buildings in particular, I would add a fourth horseman of the apocalypse: Fanaticism, religious or otherwise. These buildings are particularly targeted, both by the mobs and by the State, as symbols of the Religious Other or of Religious Obscurantism. Here we have the Dutch Protestants smashing up one of their Catholic churches.

While here we have the French Revolutionaries being even more thorough in their destruction of a church (the church of Saint-Barthélemy), in the name of the Cult of Reason.

But buildings are also victims to the horsemen’s running dogs, to use a Maoist turn of phrase – which gives me an excuse to throw in an example from 1971 of Maoist propaganda posters: compelling art, if nothing else. The phrase at the bottom reads, I am told: “People of the world unite to defeat the American invaders and their running dogs!”

These running dogs are less extreme but no less harmful forces which have disappeared buildings (to borrow a term from the violent rule in Chile and Argentina by right-wing Army putschists back in the 1970s – I wish to show myself being even-handed in my comments of Left and Right).

One is Urban Improvement. Buildings which have had the bad luck to be in the way of some Big Man’s vision of A New City, or just the municipal government’s decision to have a wider avenue for more cars, have been unceremoniously torn down.

Another running dog is Impoverishment; buildings put up when their owners had money then slowly rot and collapse when their descendants have fallen on hard times and can’t maintain them any more. Closely related has been the running dog of Indifference. The descendants have simply preferred to spend their money, inherited or otherwise, in other ways than on maintaining old buildings.

Finally, and often most damagingly for religious buildings, there is Changes in Taste. A building considered beautiful when it was put up is thought, several centuries later, to be ugly, or embarrassingly old-fashioned, or both. It absolutely needs a make-over! Closely related, again mostly for religious buildings, is Showing Off: the desire by the rich and powerful to preen their social feathers by paying for the addition of extra elements such as chapels to existing venerable structures, often to the aesthetic detriment of the whole.

So how have our eleven basilicas fared in the face of their four horsemen of the apocalypse and the five lesser running dogs? Before answering that, I think it is time to give a name to these eleven churches, to make this more personal. We have:

• • The basilica vetus (the old basilica), built in 314 CE, later renamed the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore;
  • The basilica nova (the new basilica), built in about 350 CE, later renamed the basilica of Santa Tecla;
  • The basilica portiana (the Portian basilica), built in the first half of the 4th Century CE, later renamed the basilica of San Vittore al Corpo;
  • The basilica trium magorum (basilica of the three Wise Men), built around 344 CE, later renamed the basilica of Sant’Eustorgio;
  • The basilica prophetarum (basilica of the Prophets), built in the late 370s CE, later renamed the basilica of San Dionigi;
  • The basilica martyrum (basilica of the Martyrs), built in the early 380s CE, later renamed the basilica of Sant’Ambrogio;
  • The basilica apostolorum (basilica of the Apostles), also built in the early 380s, later renamed the basilica of San Nazaro in Brolo;
  • The basilica virginum (basilica of the Virgins), built in the 380s-390s CE, later renamed the basilica of San Simpliciano;
  • The basilica palatina (the Palatine basilica), built in the 390s-410s, later renamed the basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore;
  • The basilica evangeliorum (basilica of the Evangelists), built in the first half of the 5th Century CE, later renamed the basilica of San Giovanni in Conca;
  • The basilica sancti Calimerii (basilica of Saint Calimerius), also built in the first half of the 5th Century CE, which kept the Italianised name of Santo Calimero.

Well, the first thing to say is that within no more than 150 years of being built, the eleven original buildings were all razed to the ground by the horseman of War, in the form of Attila the Hun. As part of his rampage through northern Italy in 451-452 CE, his army besieged Milan, broke through its defensive walls, and laid the city to waste. Of course, no-one at the time recorded this momentous event pictorially, so I throw in here a re-construction of the Huns looking suitably menacing under the walls of a city.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, prior to arriving beneath the walls of Milan, Attila had completely destroyed the city of Aquileia. He moved on from there and meted out the same fate to the city of Padova. He richly deserved his nickname the Scourge of God. Aquileia never recovered, but Milan (and Padova) did. Among other things, the basilicas were rebuilt.

Alas! A mere 90 years later, in 538 CE, the horseman of War came galloping over the horizon again, this time in the form of an army of Ostrogoths and Burgundians under the command of a certain Uraiah. Once again, the city was besieged, the walls were eventually pierced, and the city was razed. Worse, all the male citizens were killed and all the female citizens handed over as slaves to the Burgundians, as payment for their part in the siege. Again, no-one at the time recorded these hideous events pictorially, but there is a painting in the basilica di Sant’Eustorgio from the 17th Century which formally is about the Massacre of the Innocents but is thought to actually be about the massacre of the Milanese by the Ostrogoths and Burgundians.

Not surprisingly, it took Milan much longer to recover from this devastation, several centuries actually. But it did, and the basilicas were once again rebuilt.

Next on the scene was the horseman of Fire. In 1071 and 1075 CE, Milan suffered two devastating fires which burned down whole swathes of the city, much of whose houses were close-packed and built of wood. We have here a picture from an illuminated manuscript of a town going up in flames.

In the ensuing conflagrations, the basilicas of San Lorenzo Maggiore, in 1071, and, in 1075, San Nazaro in Brolo and Santa Tecla were badly damaged.

If I use these churches’ later names it’s that by now naming habits had changed. Churches were named after a particular saint rather than a group of saints as had been the case when these churches were first built – “tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”.

Once again, the Milanese rose to the challenge and rebuilt the burnt basilicas. But – “tutto cambia”, etc.  – building styles had evolved in the intervening centuries. The churches were now being rebuilt in the Romanesque style. Here is a reconstruction of Santa Tecla from around this time. As readers can see, the basilicas all probably looked very much like the basilicas in Ravenna, with beautiful mosaics running along the walls. Given my predilection for early Christian mosaics, I personally grieve that Milan has lost nearly all of these mosaics.

A mere 90 years after these devastating fires, in 1161, the horseman of War came riding again, this time in the form of Frederick Barbarossa (Red Beard), Holy Roman Emperor. As we shall see, he also brought with him the horseman of Fire.

He had already laid siege to the city two years earlier, had starved its populace into submission, and had forced them to accept humiliating terms. Here is a painting from 1891 by a Polish artist, Jan Czeslaw Moniuszko, which shows Barbarossa and his troops attacking the walls of Milan.

Once Frederick was gone, the Milanese had quickly reneged on the terms and taken up arms again. This time, Barbarossa was determined to grind Milan’s face into the dirt. In this, he was actively supported by the nearby cities of Lodi, Novara, Como, Cremona, and Vercelli, whose citizens were both afraid of, and jealous of, Milan’s growing power; they had allied themselves with Barbarossa in the hope that he would cut Milan down to size. Once again, the city was besieged, and once again its citizens were starved into submission. Here, in a 19th century imagining, we have the consuls of Milan coming before Barbarossa begging for mercy.

But this time, not only did Frederick impose even more humiliating terms on the Milanese, he also had his allies burn Milan to the ground, with each allied city being responsible for one district (very methodical …). But he decreed one exemption, the places of worship – he was a Christian, after all. So our basilicas more or less got through this one unscathed (more or less because some of them do seem to have got badly singed).

The basilicas now got a break from the horseman of War for 800 years, but the running dogs got to work. Because of them, four basilicas never made it down to us. Two, Santa Tecla and Santa Maria Maggiore (which were very close to each other), fell victim to the running dog of Urban Improvement, in this case in the form of a desire by the City Fathers to build in their place a much bigger and more splendid cathedral, the current Duomo of Milan (the centuries-long story of its construction is the subject of an earlier post). For reasons which will become apparent in a minute, I choose a photo of a painting of the Duomo as it was in 1819.

Sant Maria Maggiore was completely destroyed. A very small part of Santa Tecla survived as part of the shops that crowded in on the Duomo (those shops we see on the left of the painting), but that finally also disappeared after the running dog of Urban Improvement came along again in 1865, when the city fathers decided that there was a need for a grand, and large, piazza in front of the Duomo. The buildings in the painting above were all torn down to make the grand – but rather barren – piazza that we have today.

Two other basilicas fell victim to the double whammy of, first, the horseman of Fanaticism, and then the running dog of Urban Improvement. Fanaticism led to the monasteries which had become attached to the basilicas being closed down and to the monks who had looked after them being kicked out. This was done by Emperor Joseph II of Austria (Milan was in Austrian hands at this time) in the name of bringing the Catholic Church to heel and modernising it. Urban improvement took different forms. In the case of the basilica of San Dionigi, it meant that church and monastery completely disappeared as all its lands were turned into a very pleasant public park which is still with us today, the giardini Indro Montanelli.

In the case of the basilica of San Giovanni in Conca, Urban Improvement meant a widening of streets and a mad plan, dreamed up after World War II, to drive a new avenue right through the old city centre. The church being in the way, it was unceremoniously torn down. The new avenue was never built (luckily for us; by my calculations it would have gone right through where our apartment building is). But by then it was too late for the church. All that’s left of it is this miserable-looking ruin sitting forlornly in the middle of a busy road.

At this point, I’m reminded of the American children’s counting-out rhyme “Ten Little Injuns”, whose first couple of lines go like this:
Ten little Injuns standin’ in a line,
One toddled home and then there were nine;
Nine little Injuns swingin’ on a gate,
One tumbled off and then there were eight.

And it goes on until there are no little injuns left.

To paraphrase the song:
Eleven basilicas built way back when,
Two were eaten up and then there were nine.
Nine basilicas still around,
Two were in the way and then there were seven.

So seven of Milan’s original eleven paleochristian basilicas have managed to stagger on into our modern age. But … “tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”! None of them look anything like the original Roman-era basilicas. Not all of them even look like the Romanesque churches that replaced them after the disasters of Attila, the Ostrogoths, Barbarossa, and various fires. And even if they appear Romanesque, what we see today is someone’s guess as to what the Romanesque versions of the churches looked like. Let’s look at them one by one.

I start with the basilica di Sant’Ambrogio because it is a mere 10 minutes’ walk from where my wife and I live in Milan, and we often go by it on our various walks. It is also the one that at first glance seems to have changed the least since its rebuilding in the Romanesque style in the 1090s CE. And even in the Romanesque rebuild we see the ghost of the original Roman basilica; the 11th Century builders scrupulously maintained the original building’s floor plan. Here we have some photos of this delightful building. This first shot shows how the church is seen from the road in front of it.

As readers can see, the façade of the church is obscured by some building whose immediate purpose is not clear. The visitor first has to enter this building to enter the church proper. It turns out to be an enclosed courtyard, or – to give it its Latin name – atrium.

It’s interesting that this atrium has come down to us. When the original Roman basilica was built, the atrium had a precise function. At some point during the Liturgy, the catechumens, people who were not “full” Christians yet because they had not yet been baptised, had to file out into the atrium because they were not allowed to be present for the full Liturgy. By the time the church was rebuilt in Romanesque style, this function was meaningless because by then all Christians were baptised at birth. Luckily, it was decided to keep it and use it instead to hold various meetings. So this very early Christian architectural element has managed to make it down to us.

The interior shows the clean, simple lines of the Romanesque style.

In this last photo, readers can glimpse the magnificent mosaic in the apse. Here is a closer look at it – because of the ciborium over the high altar, it’s difficult to get a clean view.

It was originally laid down in the 8th Century, some three centuries after the disaster of the Ostrogoths. From a century later comes the main altar, a magnificent piece of Carolingian goldsmithing.

The ciborium under which the altar sits is equally magnificent, but readers will have to go and visit Sant’Ambrogio to hear about it. I want instead to take readers to a small side chapel, San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro, where some even earlier mosaics, laid down between the sacks of the city by the Huns and the Ostrogoths, by some miracle managed to survive. We see here the cupola of this little chapel, with its mosaic field of gold surrounding a portrait of Saint Victor.

Sharp-eyed readers will have noted that the walls below the cupola carry mosaics of some serious-looking fellows dressed in togas. These are various saints and early martyrs. I show one of these, the mosaic of Saint Ambrose, because contrary to the others it is said to be an actual likeness of the saint, the oldest in existence.

Yes indeed, the basilica of Sant’Ambrogio doesn’t seem to have changed terribly much since its Romanesque incarnation. But alas! It has changed. Because a mere 80 years ago the horseman of War came riding back to Milan in the form of massive bombing raids during World War II. The first of these was on the night of 24/25 October of 1942. There was a second such raid in mid-February of 1943. The climax was four nights in August. These were all raids which, like the infamous bombing raid on Dresden in 1945, a photo of which I give above, deliberately tried to burn the city down by creating a fire storm. Luckily, by the 20th Century there wasn’t that much wood left in Milan’s buildings so a fire storm wasn’t started. Nevertheless, 50% of the city’s buildings were destroyed or damaged. And one of the buildings which was badly damaged was Sant’Ambrogio.

Restorers did a good job after the war in putting the basilica back together again, but you can tell that much of the brickwork is new, as are many of the tesserae in that magnificent mosaic in the apse.

“Tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”.

Normally, we would next look at the basilica of San Lorenzo. It’s even closer to our apartment in Milan, a mere five minutes’ walk away, and we go by it very often on our way down to Milan’s canals. In fact, we go by it so often that I wrote a whole post about it a few years back, so I will refer readers back to that post.

Logically, the next basilica to consider is the basilica of Sant’Eustorgio. I say logically because there is now a park, il parco delle Basiliche (or, to give it its new name, parco Giovanni Paolo II), which runs between San Lorenzo and Sant’Eustorgio (a park whose creation was much helped by the bombing during World War II; the houses standing on what is now the park were so badly damaged that it was decided to simply tear them all down and create a park in their place). When you enter the park at its northern end, you have this wonderful sight of the venerable pile of San Lorenzo behind you. But very, very little of what we see comes from the original Roman-era basilica, and even from the Romanesque version.

“Tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”.

Then the walk southwards through the park brings you to Sant’Eustorgio, which stands at the southern end of the park. There’s no striking view of the church from the park itself, so it’s best to make one’s way round to the front, where one is confronted with this view.

The first thing one notices are the accretions on the church’s side. Unfortunately, the church has suffered badly from the running dog of Showing Off: chapels have been added to the side of the original Romanesque church, paid for by rich Milanese families who wanted to add lustre to their family name. They may be quite pretty in and of themselves; indeed, there is a very lovely one at the back of the church which has been the subject of a previous post of mine. But they have destroyed the original harmony of the church.

The second thing to notice is the façade. It looks quite original, but actually it is the result of a restoration carried out in the mid-1860s. The restoration was certainly done in the spirit of what we know Romanesque façades looked like in northern Italy from the few original examples still with us, but it’s unknown what the original façade of Sant’Eustorgio actually looked like. When all is said and done, though, it was probably better to carry out this restoration than not – this is what the façade looked like prior to the restoration.

Apart from its leprous look, the façade had obviously already been manipulated in the intervening centuries.

The interior is nice enough, although there is nothing spectacular on show.

It was the subject of a sensitive restoration in the late 19th Century, where the restorers simply stripped away the Baroque and Neoclassical accretions and tried to bring the structure back as closely as possible to its Romanesque forms. Of course, the Romanesque builders would never have left the church as naked as it is now, they would have covered everything with frescoes. But those are pretty much all gone. As readers can see in the photo above (especially visible on the columns), the restoration brought to light a few shards of the original frescoes. But of the original mosaics which must have graced the Roman-era basilica, nada, all gone.

“Tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”.

There is one curious artefact in the basilica, and it is this:

“This” is claimed to be the sarcophagus of the Three Wise Men (“We three kings of Orient”, as the well-loved Christmas carol goes). It is fundamental to the basilica’s foundational story. It is said that Eustorgius went to Constantinople when the Milanese chose him to be their bishop, to obtain the approval of the Emperor. Not only did the Emperor approve the choice, but he also gave Eustorgius this enormous sarcophagus which contained the relics of the Three Wise Men, to take back to Milan. Eustorgius’s original idea was to place the relics in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. But the poor oxen which were pulling the cart on which this humongously heavy sarcophagus had been placed “inexplicably” came to a stop where the basilica is now and refused to go any further. Given the weight of the sarcophagus, I think the oxen’s refusal to move another hoof is perfectly explicable, but Eustorgius took this to be a divine sign that a new basilica should be built on this spot to house the relics. Thus was the original Roman-era basilica built.

If I tell this little story, it is because in the succeeding centuries those relics made the basilica famous, attracting flocks of pilgrims (and their money, the cynical me thinks to himself). Which allows me to highlight one of the side-effects of the passage of the horsemen of War and Conquest: looting. In this case, the looting took place during the burning to the ground of Milan by Frederick Barbarossa. One of Barbarossa’s principal advisors during this campaign was Rainald von Dassel, who also happened to be the Archbishop of Cologne. He carried the relics off as war booty to grace his cathedral in Cologne, where they were brought in with much pomp and subsequently housed in this magnificent reliquary (made by Nicolas de Verdun, who also made a magnificent altarpiece housed in the Abbey church of Klosterneuberg near Vienna, which I’ve written about in an earlier post).

For centuries, the religious leaders of Sant’Eustorgio pleaded to have their relics back, but successive archbishops of Cologne turned a deaf ear. It was only in 1903, after a cardinal brokered a deal, that a small portion of the relics were given back.

I shall quickly pass through the fate of the remaining four basilicas.

For the basilica of San Simpliciano, I refer readers to a post I’ve already written about it. Suffice to say that it went through the same treatment as Sant’Eustorgio: accretions of chapels in a completely different style, a restyling of the whole church in baroque and neoclassical style, and then a restoration – this time in the 20th Century – trying to bring it back to its essential Romanesque simplicity. I throw in a photo of the exterior and interior.

The best thing in this church is the painting in the apse; you can just see it in the photo. Any readers who are interested in that painting should go to my post on San Simpliciano, where I tell its story.

It was a visit to the basilica of San Nazaro in Brolo that started me on this post. Its Romanesque version endured the same fate as Sant’Eustorgio and San Simpliciano: remodelling and remodelling and remodelling of the interior with each successive Change in Taste (that running dog really ran wild here), followed by a stripping back during the late 20th Century to the original simple lines. But in addition, the running dog of Showing Off really sunk its teeth into the church’s structure. During the Renaissance, a family from Milan’s elites decided to attach their mausoleum to the church. And they didn’t just attach it to the side of the church, like a chapel. They attached it to the façade! So the poor church has permanently lost its façade, its place being taken by a square building housing the tombs of this elite family. To enter the church, one has to pass through the mausoleum.

It’s all very well to say that the Mausoleum was designed and built by Bramantino, it’s still a terrible desecration of the church!

As for the basilica of Santo Calimero, it is a poster child to bad restoration. Like the others, its Romanesque version went through various remodellings as tastes changed. It was then “restored” in the late 19th Century into someone’s idea of Romanesque, which is more pre-Raphaelite than anything else. In great distress, I throw in a photo of the mosaic that was laid down in the apse.

Which leaves the basilica San Vittore al Corpo. Well, there it wasn’t a question of remodelling. When the church, in a rather pitiful state it has to be said, was handed over to the Olivetans in 1507, they decided to simply tear down the whole building and rebuild it in the “modern” style. They also completely turned it around, with the choir where the entry used to be and the entry where the choir used to be. So it’s difficult to say that anything of the original church has remained. It is therefore with great sadness that I insert a photo of the church’s hideous façade and of its equally hideous interior.

“Tutto cambia, tutto si trasforma”. My wife is indeed right (as always). We cannot freeze things as they used to be, much as I sometimes would like to. We just have to be grateful that some of the wonderful things our ancestors created have come down to us in not too bad a shape and can only fervently hope that they will still be there for our descendants to admire in 2,000 years’ time.