Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (Bergamo)
Coordinates: 45°42′11″N 9°39′44″E / 45.70306°N 9.66222°E
The Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is a major church in the upper town of Bergamo, Northern Italy.
The church was founded in 1137 on the site of another church from the 8th century dedicated to St Mary, which had been in turn erected over a Roman temple of the Clemence. The high altar was consecrated in 1185 and in 1187 the presbytery and the transept wings were completed. Due to financial troubles, the works dragged for the whole 13th–14th centuries. The bell tower was built from 1436 (being completed around the end of the century), while in 1481–1491 a new sacristy added after the old one had been destroyed by Bartolomeo Colleoni to erect his personal mausoleum, the Colleoni Chapel.
In 1521, Pietro Isabello finished the south-western portal, also known as Porta della Fontana. The edifice was restored and modified in the 17th century.
The church opens on the square (Piazza Duomo) on its own left side, as the main façade has no entrance, being once united to the Bishops' Palace. The external appearance has largely maintained its Lombard Romanesque origins. The church can be accessed by two entrances by Giovanni da Campione (1353) and by Isabello's Porta della Fontana.
The main apse is crowned by a loggia surmounted by two frieze with geometrical and vegetables patterns, and has blind arcades with semi-columns. The latter's capitals have also vegetable themes, with the exception of one, decorated by Angels with Last Judgement's Trumpets. The transept's apses have a structure similar to the main one.
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