Cremona Cathedral
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Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta Duomo di Cremona |
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 From left to right: Bell tower ( Torrazzo ), Cathedral of Cremona and Baptistery ( Battistero ) |
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| Data | |
| place | Cremona (CR) |
| Construction year | 1107/1129/1491 |
| height | Campanile : 112.27 m |
| Coordinates | 45 ° 8 '1.1 " N , 10 ° 1' 32.2" E |
| particularities | |
| 502 steps | |
The Cathedral of Cremona ( Duomo di Cremona ) is the bishopric of the Diocese of Cremona . The Romanesque church also shows elements of Gothic , Renaissance and Baroque .
Together with the baptistery and the bell tower , the Torrazzo , it forms the most important architectural unit of the city. The three buildings face the town hall on the eastern edge of the Piazza del Comune (the old platea maior of the medieval city).
The main structure of the three buildings dates from the period between the end of the 12th and 15th centuries.
history
The foundation stone was laid in 1107, but an earthquake collapsed the church in 1117. A new building was not started until 1129. The cathedral was consecrated in 1190. Like most Italian cathedrals, it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary ( Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta , " Assumption ").
At this point in time, the church did not have its present shape. The transept was not there yet. On the side of the facade, two towers were planned based on the German model, but they were ultimately abandoned in favor of a more Italian solution; a single, large campanile was built to the north of the church, which is now called Torrazzo . In the 13th and 14th centuries the transept was built and the torrazzo was completed.
The facade was not completed until the 15th century. The redesign of the narthex replaced a simpler wooden connection between the cathedral and the high bell tower. It gave the piazza the look it is today.
The outer
The carefully decorated marble facade facing the square was built over the course of several centuries around the elaborately designed Romanesque portal . The area of this broad facade is loosened halfway through four Romanesque arcades . The 13th century rose window opens above it . The uppermost part of the facade largely dates from the early Renaissance and is accordingly equipped with niches and volutes . The two medieval, cylindrical side turrets contribute as Gothic elements to the Lombard-Central European overall impression of the building. The medieval main tower in the middle was replaced in 1491, as part of a modernization, with a newer one, which is inspired by Bramante's architecture.
The two smaller side facades of the transept are designed much simpler than the main facade and not clad in marble like this . Its basic structure and the three upper openings (each with a main rose with two rosettes on the sides) clearly reveal the structure of the three-aisled transept. As with the main facade, three turrets form the upper end of these facades. The north facade of the transept was completed in 1319, while the construction of the other side facade in the south was completed in 1374.
Both the main facade in the west and the two side facades in the north and south protrude partially freely into the room, as their height is significantly greater than that of the building mass behind it.
inner space
The church is a three-aisled basilica, richly painted on the inside, with cruciform pillars and ribbed vaults . In the upper part, the two-arched openings in the galleries reveal the predominantly Romanesque origin of the interior.
In plan, the pattern repeats 3 for all four arms of the irregular cross yokes x 3 ships . The transept, which is not quite rectangular, is very long and comparable in area to the rest of the building ( nave and choir ).
The rear end of the interior is formed by three apses : the largest central apse with the large blue fresco of Christ by Boccaccio Boccaccino dominates the entire interior. Under the choir there is a Romanesque three-aisled crypt , which was renovated in 1606.
The large altar cross ( Grande Croce ) in gold-plated silver was made between 1470 and 1478 by the Cremonese goldsmiths Ambrogio Pozzi and Agostino Sacchi. The three meter high masterpiece is located in the transept of the cathedral. The Great Cross is composed of over 1000 parts with 160 statues of different sizes. The silver base was designed by Giovanni B. Manfredi in the 18th century and made by the silversmith Giuseppe Berselli. Between 1991 and 1994 the Great Cross was restored by the Opificio delle pietre dure in Florence.
organ
The organ was built in 1984 by the Mascioni organ building company. The instrument has registers on manuals and pedal . The game actions are mechanical, the stop actions are electric.
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- Coupling: I / II, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P
The baptistery
Cremona's baptistery, the baptistery , is located immediately southwest of the church and is a 34 m high, octagonal building with a diameter of about 20 meters.
It was started in 1167 and built in brick. During the Renaissance, the baptistery took on its current appearance when the outer walls were decorated with white marble: this cladding, however, remained incomplete, which explains the current two-tone design. In the upper part of the outer walls there are galleries , the arcades of which are reminiscent of those of the main facade of the cathedral.
Also in the upper part - but only in the interior of the baptistery - there is a not free-standing, also octagonal dome , which was important for the time and which anticipates the basic scheme of the Brunelleschi dome of the Florentine cathedral , built 200 years later . The light penetrates the interior through double-arched windows and a lantern . In the middle of the baptistery is an octagonal baptismal font made of red marble stone, which dates from the 16th century.
The Torrazzo (Tower)
The Torrazzo, the church tower of the cathedral, is the symbol of the city. Its construction began around 1230 on the remains of a cemetery of still unknown origin. Towards the square, the Torrazzo is characterized by a large astronomical clock that measures 8 meters in diameter. The progressive loosening of the mass in the upper part is typical of a Romanesque campanile : two two-arched windows open above a two-arched window on the upper floors, and four-arched windows can also be seen higher up.
In the uppermost section, the square floor plan of the campanile merges into an octagon: the building is crowned by a spire, which was completed in 1309.
At 112 meters, the Torrazzo remained the tallest Italian church tower until the 20th century. Then a modern campanile was built next to the neo-Gothic cathedral in Mortegliano , which is slightly higher.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Pietro Bonometti: Cremona, una città segreta. edizioni Italcards, Bologna 1988, p. 6.
- ↑ cattedraledicremona.it
- ^ Pietro Bonometti: Cremona, una città segreta. edizioni Italcards, Bologna 1988, p. 14.
- ↑ gregduomocremona, floor plan on the website of Schola Gregoriana del Duomo di Cremona
- ^ Pietro Bonometti: Cremona, una città segreta. edizioni Italcards, Bologna 1988, p. 24.
- ↑ Loretta Dolcini: La GRANDE CROCE del Duomo di Cremona. Storia e restauro. 1994.
- ↑ Information about the organ on organicremonesi.it
- ↑ travelitalia.com
- ↑ Baptistery on originalitaly.it
- ↑ cattedraledicremona.it
- ↑ P. Ghidotti: Il Torrazzo di Cremona. Archeologia e Storia di un monumento medievale. Cremona 2000.