Duomo di Piacenza
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The Duomo di Piacenza, the Roman Catholic cathedral of Piacenza, Italy, is the seat of the diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio. It was built from 1122 to 1233 and is one of the most valuable examples of a Romanesque cathedral in northern Italy.
The façade, in Veronese pink marble and gilded stone, is horizontally parted by a gallery that dominates the three portals, decorated with capitals and Romanesque statues.
The interior has a nave and two aisles, divided by twenty-five massive pillars. Its noteworthy frescoes, made in the 14th-16th centuries by Camillo Procaccini and Ludovico Carracci, while the dome is frescoed by Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, "il Morazzone" and Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino". The presbytery has a wooden sculpture from 1479, wooden choirstalls by Giangiacomo da Genova (1471) and fifteenth-century statues of the Lombard school.
Few remains can be traced of the paleochristian basilica; Piacenza was razed by Totila in 546, during the Gothic Wars. The crypt, on the Greek cross plan, has 108 Romanesque small columns and is home to the relics of Santa Giustina, Saint Justina of Padua, who became co-patron of Piacenza in the from the ninth century; to her was dedicated the first cathedral, Domus Justinae, which collapsed in 1117 after an earthquake.
[edit] External links
- Official webpage: Duomo di Piacenza (Italian)
